TRITA-NA-D9708 CID-17, KTH, Stockholm, Sweden 1997

The Garden of Knowledge as a Knowledge Manifold

A Conceptual Framework for
Computer Supported Subjective Education
Ambjrn Naeve

The Garden of Knowledge as a Knowledge Manifold

A Conceptual Framework for Computer Supported Subjective Education
Ambjrn Naeve
Report number: TRITA-NA-D9708, CID-17
ISSN number: ISSN 1403-073X
Publication date: September 1997
E-mail of author: amb@nada.kth.se
URL of author: http://www.nada.kth.se/~ambjorn

Reports can be ordered from:

CID, Centre for User Oriented IT Design
Nada, Dept. Computing Science
KTH, Royal Institute of Technology
S-100 44 Stockhom, Sweden
telephone: + 46 8 790 91 00
fax: + 46 8 790 90 99
e-mail: cid@nada.kth.se
URL: http://www.nada.kth.se/cid/

The Garden of Knowledge

as a
Knowledge Manifold

A Conceptual Framework
for
Computer Supported Subjective Education

Ambjrn Naeve

Centre for User Oriented IT Design

Department of Numerical Analysis and Computing Science
Royal Institute of Technology, 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden

[ CID-17, TRITA-NA-D9708 ]

ABSTRACT: This work presents a unified pattern-based epistemological framework,called a Knowledge Manifold, for the description and extraction of knowledge from information. Within this framework it also presents the metaphor of the Garden Of Knowledge as a constructive example. Any type of
KM is defined in terms of its objective calibration protocols - procedures that are implemented on top
of the participating subjective knowledge-patches. They are the procedures of agreement and obedience that characterize the coherence of any type of interaction, and which are used here in order to formalize the concept of participator consciousness in terms of the inverse-direct limit duality of
Category Theory.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Acknowledgements 2
2. Subjective Background 5
3. Introduction 7
3.1 Purpose and Axioms 7
3.2 An Overview of The Garden Of Knowledge 10
3.2.1
3.2.2
3.2.3
3.2.4

What is the Garden of Knowledge? 10

What does the Garden Of Knowledge consist of? 10
How does the Garden Of Knowledge Operate? 11
What is the Purpose of the Garden Of Knowledge? 11

3.3 The Concept of a Knowledge Manifold 12

4. Terminology and Notation 13

4.1 Thought Patterns 13
4.2 Object Modeling Technique 14

5. Problem Background 16
6. The Educational Crisis - The Carrot Rape 24
6.1
6.2
6.3
6.4

The Educational Disfunctionality 24

Educational Design Patterns 26
Examination versus Insamination 29
The Structure of Present Mathematics Education 31

7. First Class Mathematics 36

7.1 What is Mathematics? 36
7.2 The First Class Mathematics Project 38
7.3 The Concept of Symmetry 38
7.3.1 The Mathemagic of Wallpaper Patterns 40

8 . Computer Supported Mathematics Education 48

8.1 The Computer as a Universal Mimicking Machine 48
8.2 The Educational Mathematics Programming Projects 49
8.2.1
8.2.2
8.2.3
8.2.4
8.2.5
8.2.6
8.2.7

MapCon 49
MapAnalyze 50
MacWallpaper 50
Drawboard - Projektiv Geometry in Practice 50
MacDrawboard - an Application for Applied Projective Geometry 50
MacFlow - a Graphical Programming Environment 51
PrimeTime 51

8.3 The First Class Mathematics project at the St.Erik School 51

8.3.1 Working with MacWallpaper 52
8.3.2 Some General Observations 53
8.3.3 A Variable as a Box with a Name and (maybe) a Content 54

9. The Garden Of Knowledge - The Evolutionary Process 56

9.1 The Initial DIL Project 56
9.2 The Lecture 56
9.3 The Concept 62

9.4
9.5
9.6
9.7
9.8

The Big Think 62

The Pythagorean Mutiny 65
The Consolidation 66
The Emergency Hack (Pythagoras of Crotona) 68
Play it again Pythagoras 69
9.8.1 The Esoteric Dimensions of Reality 70
9.8.2 The Musical Harmony of the Spheres 70
9.8.3 Transforming Knowledge into Understanding 70

9.9 The Hyperbolic Symmetry of Eschers Angels and Devils 71

9.10 The Grand Epistemologic Scheme 72
9.11 The Compromise 73

10. The Subjective Observer 74

10.1
10.2
10.3
10.4

The Mental Control Room 74

Birth - The Landing on a Strange Planet 74
The Internal Workshop 75
The Evolutionary Dilemma of the Human Brain 77

11. The Concept of a Knowledge Manifold 80

11.1
11.2
11.3
11.4
11.5
11.6

Epistemological Framework 80
Concept Geometry - Linguistically Based Concepts 83
Concept Classification 84
Classification of Responses 86
The Relations between Concepts 88
Building Knowledge-Components and Learning-Strategies 89
11.6.1 Conceptutal Overview and Design Goals 89
11.6.2 Designing a Learning Strategy 90
11.6.3 Structuring a Knowledge Component 90

11.7 Structural Evolution of Knowledge 93

11.8 The Research Front - Surface and Volume of Knowledge 93

12. Establishing Equality by Disregarding Differences 94

12.1 Disregarding the Subjective Observer
12.2 Equality as Relative Indifference 96

94

13. A Formal Model of Participator Consciousness 97

13.1
13.2
13.3
13.4

Making Sense is Disregarding Nonsense 97

The Participator as a System of Perceptors 98
The Actor/Reactor Consciousness 99
Building a Knowledge Manifold by Calibration 101

14. Future Work 103

14.1 Conceptual Navigation in Structured Information Spaces 103
14.2 The Virtual Classroom 103
14.2.1 The Controller-Commodity-Client Transaction Model 103
14.2.2 Controller-Commodity-Client model - Data Dictionary 104

15. References 108

Acknowledgements

This work is the result of a constructive interaction process that has been going on over the past
three decades. It has involved support and encouragement from a lot of people, to whom I am
deeply indebted in many ways. I could not possibly list them all, but here are some that I can
think of that represent supportive influence along my trail.
As a mathematics teacher, I am especially grateful to two of my own teachers, Henrik Eriksson
and Harold Shapiro, for their vital influence in awakening and strengthening my mathematical
interests. They are by far the two best mathematics teachers that I have had the fortune to come
across as a student. In 1967 Henrik was responsible for recruiting me into the guild of mathematics teaching - and during the following couple of years he dumped a lot of creative opportunities in my lap, in connection with some early forms of multimedia-based mathematics
teaching (the TRU adventure). Later, when I was a graduate student, Harold fostered my mathematical thinking and helped me bring it to new levels at a time when it was critically needed.
Apart from his many deep structural insights, Harold introduced me to the historic dimensions
of mathematics - by giving a course on the subject in 1973. He also deepend my philosophical
interests in general - by introducing me to such profound thinkers as Clifford [(18)] and Poincar [(128)-(131)].
As a programmer, my deepest gratitude is due to the people that taught me important things
along the way - by taking the time and energy to discuss the problems of coding with me in various ways. They include Johan Appelgren and rjan Ekeberg, who introduced me to modern
workstation lisp computing, Matti Rendahl, who supported my first stumbling steps in the
painful but powerful art of C-programming and pointer-based arithmetic, and Harald Winroth, who is presently helping me sort out the strange new world of templatified C++, as well
as the pros and cons of the Java versus Tcl-Tk approach to networked computing.
As a researcher, my special thanks are due to Yngve Sundblad and Jan-Olof Eklundh, for their
unvailing support of my computing efforts, as well as my various projects in mathematical
research and education in general. Yngve gave me my first Mac - back in 1985 - at about the
same time as Jan-Olof gave me a position as geometer within his Computational Vision and
Active Perceptions research group (CVAP) at NADA. Over the last 12 years, this has allowed
me to devote half of my working time to geometrical research. About ten years ago, Yngve
invited me into his GUI-based programming projects - called PIM, PMI, IPM, etc - where I
had the opportunity to design educational tools for mathematics, and get them implemented by
a group of dedicated, creative and often surprisingly competent students. Over the last decade,
these projects have resulted in quite a few interesting attempts in computer supported mathematics education. Six years ago, Yngve also made a few of the old generation of Macs available
to the kids of the First Class Mathematics project which formed the basis for its vitally important computer support.
As the architect behind the Garden Of Knowledge project, I am grateful to the entire GOKgroup, who have put up with my never ending flow of ideas and suggestions, and worked hard
in order to separate the sense from the nonsense. The core of the group consists of Rikard
Linde, Kenneth Olausson, Katarina Skantz, Bo Westerlund and Kristina svrn. - with an addition of Mattias Algotsson, Klara Desser-Hansson, Anders Jderberg, Mns Tegnr and Fre-

drik Winberg during various parts of the development process. During the spring of 97, Fredrik
has done an excellent job of implementing the third prototype of the GOK in Director.
As a program-user, I am grateful to NADAs excellent Systems Group for their infallible support and dedication in solving all kinds of computational environment problems. Ragge Sundblad, Jan-Erik Mngs, Mikael Magnusson, Stefan Prytz, Lasse Carlestam and Johan Berglund,
have all been especially supportive to me over the years - during the last year to the great benefit of the GOK-project as well.
The GOK-project is carried out within a stimulating environment of mixed competences, which
is called the Center for User-Oriented IT Design (CID) at NADA. I am grateful to Yngve for
the crucial part he has played in creating CID as well as for his ongoing efforts in order to maintain and develop it further. Working - since a year - at CID as a guest researcher has given me
access to a creative arena where my educational ideas have found an interdisciplinary meetingground for constructive development. Viveca Bjuhr and Sren Lenman have been especially
valuable in keeping the CID environment operational to our project in various ways. I am also
grateful to Sren for illuminating discussions on various research problems concerning navigation in large information spaces [(96)], as well as on the VRML/Java based interaction possibilities of the emerging virtual classroom. This gratitude also includes Richard Wessblad, my
friend and fellow computer consultant, for his contributions to the structure of the virtual classroom - especially in connection with its possible implementation in Java.
My heartfelt thanks also to Lars Svensson, my old friend and mathematical soulmate from the
department of Mathematics at KTH. Many ideas presented here have originated in our ongoing
philosophical and educational discussion - which we have kept going since it got started back in
1975. These ideas include the mathematical definition of actor/reactor consciousness, in terms
of the so called inverse and direct limits of category theory, that we formulated together during an abstract algebraic period of the early eighties1.
Speaking of old friends, I am also indebted to Lloyd G. Cross and his son Lloyd T. Cross for our
long-term collaboration on various projects - starting with solar energy and the double-cylindrical pointfocus principle2 in 1976, and leading up to our present projects on holographic programming (HoloTrace) and 3d-image viewer technology (3D-screen). The discovery of the
double-cylindrical mathematics back in 1976 gave me the drive to start exploring geometry on
my own - as a form of geometric archeologist. This activity has been taking up a significant part
of my time ever since.
I am grateful to Anette Philipson and Kristina Lindgren at St.Eriks Catholic School for letting
me have such great fun with the kids in my daughters class - by doing First Class Mathematics
with them about once a week over the past six years. This experience has strengthened my conviction that mathematics can be made available to children in a new and more exiting way.
Thanks also to Hans Nihln of Ericsson (EUAB) who contributed to the FCM-project by lending us an LCD-display for overhead-projection of the computer screen. This made it possible
for us to display and discuss the childrens individually created MacWallpaper patterns - as well
as to interact with the powerful Mathematica program - in front of the class.
1. See [(106)].
2. For a mathematical formulation as well as a proof, see [(111)], pp. 154-156.

Thanks to Hans Markstedt at the department of Photography at KTH , who managed to produce
exactly the information I wanted, namely a high-speed film recording of the splash of a drop of
milk. We use it as a major multimedial attraction in the present (=third) prototype of the GOK.
Thanks also to Gran Adolfson at Sveriges Telvision, who supplied me with some multimedial
rawmaterial (= videotape) for the second GOK-prototype of December 96.
I also want to thank Tomas Andersson, for an interesting discussion that we had in May 96. A
month later, his concept of the Garden of Sweden contributed to making me realize the paradise-dual kind of symmetry between the garden of knowledge and the tree of ignorance on the one hand - and the traditional garden of ignorance with its famous tree of knowledge
on the other.
Speaking of discussions, I gratefully acknowledge the philosophical coffee-table-club at
CVAP. Quite a few of the workhours wasted on philosophy have been spent around that table
- in conversations with a multitude of interesting people - including Magnus Andersson, Fredrik Bergholm, Demetre Betsis, Lars Bretzner, Henrik Christensen, Jan-Olof Eklundh, Birgit
Ekberg-Eriksson, Daniel Fagerstrm, Per Fornland, Tony Lindeberg, Peter Nordlund, Kourosh
Pahlavan, Matti Rendahl and Richard Wessblad.
Last but not least I want to thank the manyfold of students that, over the years, have endured,
allowed and even encouraged my various forms of conceptual, historical and philosophical
deviations from the hard-core computational subject-matter of the required mathematics-curriculae. Thank you for your patience, your interest and most of all for your enjoyment in letting me
share so many of my personal mathematical enthusiasms with you!
Man lr s lnge man har elever!

KTH, August 31, 1997

Ambjrn Naeve

Subjective Background

Since I will regard all knowledge as built by calibration on top of a subjective base [Definition
(21)], it is appropriate for me to give a brief description of the subjective background that has
brought me into writing these pages.
I started teaching mathematics at the university level (KTH) back in 1967. At that time I was
just a teenager and a student myself, in fact starting out for my second year at the division of
Technical Physics at KTH. I was hired as a so called exercise-assistant (vningsassistent) in a
basic course of linear algebra and geometry - a kind of teacher that would solve problems on
the blackbord in session with a group of about 15 - 30 students.
I instantly loved teaching because I got a good response from my pupils - and I consider myself
extremely fortunate to have been allowed to spend all but one of my student years at KTH
teaching there at the same time. By some simple twists of fate, already in my second teaching
year - the infamous 1968 - I found myself involved with experimental (Video-based) mathematics education, and the third year (1969) I was, de facto, responsible for this new type of TVbased math-course, called the TV-course fo Linear Algebra. I ran the show on my own, so to
say. We had no human lecturer and I was managing the course - as a course-assistant (of
course!) - but I was in fact doing the equivalent job of a present hgskolelektor - like hiring
and briefing exercise-assistants and putting together the course exam. The lectures were taped
on huge reels and I had to go down to the control room and mount them at the start of each
class. In those days we had TV-monitors all over the classrooms in Sing-Sing (as the major
mathematics-faculty building at KTH is called).
During the seventies, I spent a couple of years traveling around - mainly in Africa, India and
North America. In 1976, I met Lloyd Cross - a physicist working in San Francisco and well
renowned within the fields of lasers and holography. Working together we made a geometric
discovery that changed my life. It was a new and simple way to concentrate radiative energy
from a distant source by replacing the familiar parabolic disc by two parabolic cylinders.1 This
double-cylindrical pointfocus principle made me embark on a serious study of classical geometry. I discovered a lost continent of more or less forgotten results, which had the effect of turning me into a form of geometric archeologist. Some of my early rediscoveries were in the field
of so called projective geometry, and in the early eighties I became a projective prophet,
preaching the beauty of this branch of geometry - as well as its usefulness for the representation
of many visual engineering problems. In 1983 I met Jan-Olof Eklundh, who became my first
projective disciple and gave me a research position within his newly formed computer vision
group CVAP at KTH. The projective geometry course that I gave at CVAP in 1983 - as well as
some subsequent research work2 - marks the beginning of an evolutionary process that has lead
to a widespread use of projective geometry within the field of computer vision.
Around that time I became interested in computers as a means to interactively explore and
experience geometric structure [(110)]. I started out in Lisp - on a Xerox-1108 Interlisp workstation - but I also did some work on the early Macintosh3. When the Mac-II came out in 1987,
1. For a mathematical proof of the double-cylindrical pointfocus principle, see [(105)] or [(111)].
2. especially [(107)] and [(109)].
3. due to the courtesy of Yngve Sundblad, who cut across the red tape and supplied me with a machine for home use.

I switched to this platform, and the same year I traded the Xerox-machine for a Symbolics 3600
running Commonlisp. By that time I had started up a research project called Motion Problems
in Computer Vision, together with Lars Svensson - a friend and fellow mathematician at KTH.
This lead us into new forms of geometric archeology - resulting in work on projective correspondence [(161)], exterior algebra [(108)] and double algebra [(159)] - which eventually
found its way into the computer vision community. However, by that time Lars and I had discovered geometric algebra, which seems to provide the ultimate algebraic description of geometry [(71)].
In parallel to this development I also worked a lot with something called congruence geometry,
which is concerned with the representation of various sets of lines in space. In 1993 this
became the subject of my PhD-thesis in geometry, which has the title Focal Shape Geometry of
Surfaces in Euclidean Space [(111)]. Several of the experiments in my thesis were carried out
by the use of Reflections, which is a program for the interactive study of reflected wavefronts,
that was developed on the Symbolics machine by Johan Appelgren - as a part of his masters of
engineering thesis under my supervision [(5)].
Moreover, since 1986, I have been involved with developing software for mathematics education [See chapter (8.2) ]. Also, since 1991, I have been conducting an experimental project in
early mathematics education - called the First Class Mathematics project - at St. Eriks Catholic School in Stockholm [see chapter (6.5)].
Since 1990, I have also worked part time as a consultant for industry, solving problems in
applied mathematics and implementing the solutions in C, C++ and Mathematica. I have also
developed courses in Lisp, C++ and Object-Oriented Analysis and Design - courses for industrial programmers and software engineers, which I have taught in various companies, such as
e.g. Ericsson and Telia.
To summarize my teaching activities at KTH, over the last 30 years I have taught just about
every type of course there is within the mathematics faculty - algebra, real analysis in one and
several dimensions, complex analysis, fourier analysis and discrete mathematics to name a few.
During this time, I have been engaged in the inside back-bone work of mathematics teaching,
such as the manufacturing and correcting of exams and the negotiations involved in establishing
their calibration protocols of error-tolerance. It is this involvement that forms the basis from
which I speak on the subject of education in general, and of mathematics-education in particular.

3
3.1

Introduction
Purpose and Axioms

This paper is about spreading an infection. A kind of conceptual idea-virus that has to do with
how to think about the educational process. The infection manifests itself in a change of
thought-pattern - away from the traditional compulsory learning pattern with its examinationoriented quality metri [Figure (8)], towards a new pattern based on voluntary learning with
what I call insamination-oriented quality metric [Figure (9)]. This is a quality metric based on
interest and entrance-tests - instead of the traditional grades and exit-tests that form the
backbone of the old quality metric.
In Chapter (11) below, I introduce the concept of a Knowledge Manifold (KM), as an abstract
framework within which to think about knowledge formation in general. The fundamentally
important property about a KM is that it builds knowledge subjectively, i.e. from the individual
(subjective) towards the collective (objective). Such calibration processes are performed by
establishing and adhering to a variety of extremely complex calibration-protocols.
Moreover, I discuss a specific model (= realization) of a KM called the Garden Of Knowledge
(GOK), which started last spring as a Pythagorean lecture on the historic relationships between
mathematics and music - and has evolved into a computer based interactive learning environment that is presently being developed at CID 1. The GOK-project has given me an opportunity
to subject my educational ideas to many forms of constructive filtering by an interdisciplinary
group of creative people in a highly stimulating environment. This has contributed substantially
towards transforming these ideas into communicable form.
Speaking from three decades of teaching and research experience within the fields of mathematics and computer science at KTH, having seen a generation of teknologer pass by in their
perennial hunt for degrees and diplomas, I have taken the liberty to present here some of my
personal views on the subject of education. These views are presented within a framework of
conceptual structure, which I believe to be important in connection with any serious discussion
of the structure of the educational process as a whole. They are also important as a conceptual
foundation from which to think about the electronic evolutionary possibilities of traditional
teaching which are manifesting themselves in the emerging virtual classroom.
Over the years, I have seen the emphasis of the mathematics courses shift. Basically, the shift
has taken place in one direction: towards How and away from Why. In terms of educational
mathematical activities, this has resulted in more and more of algorithms and and less and less
of proof. No doubt, the emergence of the computer has contributed substantially to this development, which may well be one of the reasons why it holds such low esteem in mathematical
quarters. Sharing - to a degree - this mathematicians contempt for the computer, I have at the
same time become convinced that the computer has great potential as a tool to substantially
increase the level of conceptual (= mathematical) understanding. Hence, during the last decade,
I have been involved in designing computer-based tools that support mathematics education in
various ways.

1. See the group-report [(97)] from the Garden Of Knowledge project, KTH, September 1997.

Working, since my daughters first school year, with her class as an external resource in mathematics has given me a unique opportunity to test some of my mathematics-educational ideas
on a few young and un-biased minds. This experience has strengthend my conviction that one
can introduce essential mathematical ideas from the start - first class mathematical ideas from
first class on, so to say - and do so in an interest-provoking way. Over the last six years, I have
presented these kids with a kind of mathematical smorgasbord of structural ideas. This is my
small-scale version of the First Class Mathematics project, and it forms another experimental
basis from which I approach the subject of mathematics education.
On one level, this paper contains a number of subjective statements, which is why I have chosen
to write it in first tense. However, this does not imply that the paper is devoid of objective content. On the meta-level, I have tried to separate these two qualities by introducing the labels
Opinion, for the subjective and Fact for the objective aspects of knowledge - as I conceive
them. Of course, there are no sharp limits, only a gradual difference in types of calibration procedure.
My discussion starts out from two fundamental opinions that I have elevated to the status of
Axiom (= fundamental belief ). They represent the ultimate foundation upon which my thinking
about education is built. If you do not share my belief that these axioms are important guidelines for the educational process as a whole, then you will probably disagree with most of what
I have to say further on. On the other hand, if you do share this belief, chances are that my ways
of reasoning will have more in common with your own.
Axiom 1:

No one but you yourself can teach you anything.

A good teacher can inspire you to learn.

We all know that the most effective way for a teacher to get results is by getting the learners
interested. And this, in turn, is most effectively achieved if the teacher can manage to display
her own love of the subject.
Axiom 2:

It should be anybodys right to refuse to be taught,

without thereby losing respect from society in any way.

No none should be taught anything against his or her own will. The right to refuse to be taught
is an important human right, which is seriously endangered these days. The information-society
is being force fed down our collective throat, whether we want it or not. That is why IT is invariably portrayed as a form of human right for everybody - in order to mask the underlying
issues and avoid the embarrassing debate of whether we really want this IT-based society or
not. And - in case we do want IT - what do we really want IT for? Or, in other terms:
Question 1:

What are we really going to inform each other about in this information age?

Let me venture my first formal

Opinion 1:

The lack of debate around the vitally important Question (1) reflects the predominating IT investment pattern, which can be expressed as the following
variation on Marshall McLuhan1: Weve got the media - but where is the message?

In our days, information has become identified with negative complication - in the sense of
removal of uncertainty. The informational content of a certain message - its so called Shannoninformation - is measured1 in terms of how long it takes to transfer the message on a given communications line. Tor Nrretranders has noted the interesting fact that the two people who created the dominating information concept of the electronic age - Claude Shannon and Warren
Weaver - both worked for AT&T. This company is of course a giant among the telecom companies that are now reaping the benefits of the present information => complication process as they busily transform McLuhans vision of the global electronic village2 into their own
vision of the global telephone kiosk.
Opinion 2:

The global-telephone-kiosk pattern shows strong similarities to the pattern of

the familiar computer-in-the-classroom neurosis, which in turn is similar to
the dominating thought-pattern of traditional development aid. Just as Africa
has beed filled with rusting tractors - rendered disfunctional by lack of infrastructure, concentrating on sales-talk of type each kid should have a personal
computer has the result of drowning the class-rooms with rusting computers of all sorts - rendered disfunctional by lack of teacher training. Too often
the computers end up just standing there as a form of teachers alibi for not
having to deal with this weird and scary computer thing anyway.

Moreover, while Im at it, let me recall

Opinion 3:

The computer has great potential as an educational tool - in support of creative exploration - not only within the field of mathematics, but in many other
fields as well.

However, I have no doubt that

Opinion 4:

If the educational potential of the computer is to be put to effective use within

the school system, it implies at least a doubling of the live-teacher-density,
i.e. a halving of the student group size.

When the students start exploring on their own, the sheer number of their questions can be
expected to grow dramatically. After all, this is one of the major advantages of an individually
oriented curriculum - in as much as it indicates some form of ongoing mental activity! If the
school-system doesnt provide live resources to respond to this wave of questions, computerbased education is bound to increase the level of confusion and frustration in the minds of the
students - instead of promoting their interest and curiosity to explore further!

1. The media is the message, see [(102)].

1. For a mathematical definition of Shannon-information, see [(149)].
2. See [(103)].

3.2
3.2.1

An Overview of The Garden Of Knowledge

What is the Garden of Knowledge?

Definition 1:

The Garden Of Knowledge in the following referred to as the GOK - is a

computer program for keeping track of the interrelated structure of ideas,
designed to support the expression of their relations to other ideas as well as
their evolution over time and culture.

The GOK can be seen as a multi-medial tool which aims to develop an interdisciplinary understanding of the world of phenomena by supporting their conceptualization, exploration and
explanation in an experimentally oriented way. Its aim is to help its users to Ask every question and question every answer within the chosen field of his or her own interest.
The purpose of the GOK is to expose and illuminate the concepts which forms the basis of the
science-oriented worldview which characterizes our modern industrial society.The GOK aims
to work as a sort of philosophy s(t)imulator, contributing towards providing a net-based structure for the ongoing philosophical debate which is collectively knows as the educational process. The GOK can therefore be regarded as a knowledge-tool which is especially well suited for
an interactive and individual-oriented distance education on the net.
The GOK purports to aid the user to ask every question and question every answer, within the
chosen field of his or her own interest. Hence it supports an educational process wich aims to
reduce the final authority of the answer by responding to (instead of answering) a question and thereby assuming more responsibility for it.
The version of the GOK which is presently being implemented is specifically devoted to illuminating the connections between mathematics and music - regarded both from a conceptual and
from a historical perspective. This brings us back to the 6:th century BC and to the old
Greeks. The mathemagician Pythagoras is therefore a central figure in the GOK, both as the
discoverer of the mathematical foundations of musical harmony, as well as the instigator of a
contemplatively oriented, science-based religion, which regarded the contemplation of the
rational mystic of numbers as a way to attain the deepest form of knowledge.
3.2.2

What does the Garden Of Knowledge consist of?

The GOK consists of a mixture of theoretical and experimental environments. The theoretical
parts in themselves consist of entries concerning phenomena, concepts and people. Working in
the Garden Of Knowledge is called studying, and a GOK-worker is referred to as a learner or a
student. Studying includes recording ones responses to different types of questions that relate to
a potentially unlimited number of phenomena and concepts. To encourage the questioning
process, a few default question/response configurations are available to the student.
The overall question is phrased as: What is its nature?, which is magnified by a What--How-Why aspect-coordinate-system with the respective dimensions: What does it consist of?,
How does it behave?, and Why does it behave this way?

10

3.2.3

How does the Garden Of Knowledge Operate?

The teacher-gardener maintains her own garden of knowledge, where she alone has root priviledges. Her thoughts on various questions are always available to the guests of her garden in
the form of thoughts from the root.
Students are invited into the teachers garden and given the opportunity to respond to various
types of questions, some of them defaulted by the teacher-gardener, others constructed by the
students themselves. The questions fall into different basic categories: The questions of WHAT
(analysis), HOW (design), WHEN (strategy), WHY (ethics), WHICH (esthetics), WHERE
(trend), WHO (acknowledgement) and IF (hypothesis) respectively. The students are also free
to comment on the teachers root-responses to these questions. When the student is engaged in
this activity, any pre-recorded root-responses of the teacher-gardner is always available, making
it possible to follow their explanatory links further into the literature.
The GOK has three different modes of operation - corresponding to three different kinds of
trees (apples) - namely the exoteric mode (corresponding to the tree of materia), the esoteric
mode (corresponding to the tree of spirit) and the random mode (corresponding to the tree of
ignorance).
Each student must take a bite from one of the three apples before any questions can be asked.
This act transforms the garden into the corresponding mode of operation, which has an influence on the formulation of the question itself. Thus when the overall question is asked in the
exoteric mode, it is formulated as: What is its material nature?, whereas when the same question is asked in the esoteric mode, it is formulated as: What is its spiritual nature?. In the random mode, both the questions and the responses are created as syntactically correct verbal
sentences (well formed formulas) with their individual members drawn at random from a database of candidates from different word classes1.
3.2.4

What is the Purpose of the Garden Of Knowledge?

The purpose of the GOK is to cultivate knowledge and make it transmute into understanding.
This means supporting the transformation of the traditional teacher-preacher into a new type of
teacher-gardner (teacher-guardian) of knowledge. Just as the catepillar has to retire into a
cocoon in order to transmute into a butterfly, so must the student engage in spinning his mental
cocoons inside the (world wide) web of knowledge, retire inside it, reflect upon his thoughts
and internalize them - in order to make them aquire the wings of understanding! Within his garden, the teacher-guardian is devoted to guarding these cocoons, and nourishing them well in
order to support their delicate inner development process!

1. This is a contraption that could be thought of as a kind of one-armed verbal bandit, whose jackpots are delivered in the
form of silly poems.

11

3.3

The Concept of a Knowledge Manifold

An important idea presented in this paper is the concept of an idea as a representation of a subjective experience [Definition (21)]. This represents a totally anti-Platonian definition of an
idea. Platos ideas were objective and eternally true - although they were only available to us
by contemplation of the mathematical mysteries. The definition of idea used here is totally subjective and represents each individuals own mental space. The collection of such ideas within each individual - is called a knowledge-patch.
Such subjective knowledge-patches do not grow in isolation. Although each person is the gardner of his or her own personal knowledge-patch, these patches are constantly calibrated with
their surroundings in a multitude of different ways.
In Chapter (11) I introduce the term Knowledge-Manifold for the collection of calibrated
knowledge patches. The concept is inspired by differential geometry, where the equivalent of a
knowledge-patch is called a local-coordinate-patch - and represents a way to describe (= parametrize) the local neighborhood of some point. The famous mathematician David Hilbert has
commented that most peoples thoughts move around in a circle with radius zero, which they
call their stand-point. In the context of a Knowledge Manifold, one can expand on Hilberts
observation and say: Peoples thoughts move around in a space of personal ideas, which could
be called their knowledge-patch or their own subjective reality.

12

Terminology and Notation

4.1

Thought Patterns

In the following pages I will make use of various types of patterns - a way of expressing structure that is becoming popular within the software engineering community1. However, it is also
receiving attention in wider circles - even including such mathematically remote areas as the
humanistic sciences2. Since I will make use of patterns in order to express various combinations of conceptual thoughts, I make the following
Definition 2:

A thought-pattern expresses the interaction of a number of concepts.

It represents a way to think about the underlying subject matter.

A thought-pattern is a form of arithmomorphic grid 3that we put on top of our dialectical experiences in order to make them communicable (= medial). The most obvious example is language itself. As a thought-pattern, our language shapes our way of thinking in more ways than
we could ever express4. In fact, it determines the very essence of what is expressible (sagbar)
in the sense of Wittgenstein, who finishes his Tractatus with the famous words:
On whatever subject we cannot speak, we must remain silent5

In accordance with the terminology of arithmomorphology, I make the following

Definition 3:

The term arithmomorphic distortion will refer to the discrepancy that any
arithmomorphic grid (= thought-pattern) by necessity creates in relation to
the underlying dialectical reality that it is trying to express.

A thought-pattern functions as a grid by trying to capture (= express) some kind of typical

behaviour. It functions as a form of strategic mistake. By trying to express something but not
quite succeeding, it provokes a discussion about its own inappropriateness. In this way a
thought-pattern directs mental energy towards the process of making its distortions expressible,
thereby inspiring a more informed calibration process between the different participators
involved in its interpretation.
A thought-pattern is always subjectively created, and successively objectivized by different calibration procedures. The state of objectivization (= collective agreement on validity) of any
though-pattern is represented by its corresponding calibration protocols. Since the thought-patterns presented here lack an attempt to describe these protocols, they are to be considered basically my own subjective thought-patterns. That does not mean, however, that I consider them all

1. See e.g. [(50)].

2. They have been used e.g. within literature criticism in order to construct a kind of pattern protocols for gender based socal interaction. See [(116)] or [(117)].
3. The dichotomy between arithmomorphic and dialectical concepts is due to Georgescu-Roegen, [(57)], who uses the term
arithmomorphic for sharply defined concepts, that are suitable rawmaterial for the either-or type of reasoning of Aristotelian logic - as opposed to the dialectical concepts, that are smoothly transcending and gradually overlapping, like e.g.
day and night, truth and deception, or joy and sadness.
4. See e.g. [(170)].
5. Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darber mu man schweigen, [(174)], p. 115.

13

as having originated with me. On the contrary, I have often tried to express how I conceive the
thought-patterns of others. This is of course an important part of the objective calibration process.
To summarize this discussion, I want to emphasize the following
Fact 1:

When I express a certain thought-pattern, I do not mean it to be taken literally.

Neither do I claim it to apply to any single individual case. The inevitable arithmomorphic distortion of Definition (3) must always be taken into account.

I see though-patterns as stereotyped ways of thinking that may or may not apply in the individual case, but which might have a certain statistical quality about them. In fact, I think of them
somewhat like the laws of quantum mechanics in contrast to the old deterministic laws of classical (= newtonian) mechanics.
The common denominator of the thought-patterns that I present in this paper, is the fact that I
have seen traces of them in various places - both within academia - in the small - and within the
surrounding society itself - in the large. In some cases this may well have been due to my misconception of the situation. In any case, it is an important benefit of thought-patterns to contribute towards making all forms of prejudice explicit.

4.2

Object Modeling Technique

The notation used in this paper is standard OMT 1, with a few notable exceptions.
The type identificaton operator - which maps an instance to its corresponding type - is denoted
by isA , and its inverse, the instantiation operator is denoted by a.This brings the model closer
to the normal linguistic representations of the corresponding concepts, as should be evident
from Figure (1). I also mix the instance- and the class-diagrams of OMT in some ways of my
own, as you will see below.
As my first example, let me take the educational shift from Why towards How - and the corresponding shift in mathematical classroom activity from Proof toward Algorithm - that I spoke
of before.This structure is expressed in the pattern of Figure (2) - where the arrows are additions of my own (in relation to standard OMT):
The vertical arrows represent equivalence (= isomorphy) in the traditional mathematical sense.
The horizontal filled arrows represent trend, i.e. a movement in time, or a tendency to shift
away from something and towards something else.

1. as defined e.g. in [(138)].

14

Relation

Generalization/Specialization

Association

Aggregation

Vehicle

isAKO

aCar

KO

isAPOa

isA
aCar

Car
PO

isA

Car

Wheel
aWheel

aCar
Car
aCar

isA

Car

KindOf
isAKindOf

aWheel

Vehicle

Wheel

Vehicle

aWheel

isA

Wheel

PartOf
isAPartOf

Car
aCar

Fig. 1. The OMT notation with the addition of isA, isAKO and isAPOa..

Question

How

Why

Algorithm

Proof

Mathematical Activity
Fig. 2. The trend in higher mathematics education as I have experienced it.

15

Problem Background

The problem of maintaining the quality of the educational process has been a fundamental concern within all school-systems - quality being taken, through the ages, to mean a variety of
different things. A few hundred years ago - in the earlier parts of the process often referred to as
lower education - quality was roughly equivalent to knowing the 10 commandments as well
as a couple of hymns, the more the better. Around the middle of the last century, the concept of
quality in lower education also included being able to read and write - at least to the extent of
being able to follow the posted instructions at work. In the information age of today, reading
and writing have expanded into necessary instruments of communication, and mastering them
is therefore considered to be a vital part of each persons individual development.
In the later parts of the educational process - usually referred to as higher education - the measures of quality have been less explicit and harder to formulate. Producing teachers that are able
to supply the required quality of lower education is an obvious goal, but how should it be
achieved? An what does it really mean to produce researchers of an internationally competitive standard or some equivalently vague formulation.
An important aspect of the quality of higher education is the inherent tension between the specialist and the generalist perspective. Reading some of the classical gems from the science-literature of about a century ago1, one is bound to be struck by the holistic ambitions to
comprehend the world in its entirety that still existed among the leading scientific thinkers of
the late nineteenth century.
But then, something amazing happened - something that fundamentally changed everything.
Around the turn of the century, there was a sudden explosion of abstraction - a kind of mental
supernova - which had an enormous impact that is still being felt throughout our entire culture.
To mention just a few of its many consequences, mathematics was catapulted into new conceptual dimensions, where it remained in order to explore a multitude of new and exiting structures. New fields popped up like mushrooms, resulting in such linguistic combinations as
point-set topology, functional analysis or algebraic geometry, to name but a few of the
many new brands of mathematics that were invented.
The new conceptual outlook created a strong movement towards the formalization of mathematics itself; a movement that was headed by the great mathematician David Hilbert. However,
these attempts were abruptly and permanently ended by the famous article of Kurt Gdel [(62)]
in 1931, where he wrote the observing subject into the mathematical equations. In doing so,
Gdel gave mathematics a place among the anthropocentric activities - he so to say subjectified the subject once and for all!
During the present century, mathematics has evolved into some kind of abstract, conceptual
cooking competition, where the structural molecules of the common (= everyday) spices are
taken apart and combined into new and exiting tastes. Part of what this process has done to the
concepts of continuity and arithmetic is illustrated in Figure (3).

1. People like Helmholz, Maxwell and Poincar - to name a few.

16

Set

Topological Space
T1- Space

Measure Space

Module

Grupoid
(ordered)

Abstract Integral

Semigroup
Monoid

Hausdorff Space
Vector Space

Group

Normal Space
Topological Vector Space

Ring
Abelian Group

Metric Space
Field
Complete Metric Space

Normed Linear Space

Ordered Field
Banach Space
Complete Ordered Field
Hilbert Space

Fig. 3. Modern mathematical taxonomy of the concepts of continuity and arithmetic.

In physics, the effects of the abstraction-supernova included the destruction of the classical
(newtonian) world-view with its God-given deterministic laws, both in the large - by relativity
theory - and in the small - by quantum theory . In this mind-boggling process, the old deterministic God has been randomized and turned into a kind of hedging expert - who is running
the world by betting on averages, and who cannot even keep separate track of space and time!
God doesnt play dice with the universe1 echoes the famous words of Einstein - as a remainder of the old deterministic paradigm. But today it is Order out of Chaos, and Random Rules
- the dice games are played everywhere2 from the sub-atomic level up to the bingo-lotto numbered particles that bounce around on our TV-screens!
Another effect of the abstract explosion a century ago has been to increase scientific activities
by several orders of magnitude. This knowledge-explosion is the cause of the present age of
specialization. Today it is impossible for any single mind to even begin to comprehend the
totality of what is going on - in order to obtain some kind of scientifically based world-view in

1. because he neither has the time nor the space, one is tempted to add (from the relativistic point of view).
2. It is part of the Faustian contract of probability theory that by giving up our ambition to aquire knowledge
about the individual case, we gain a new type of knowledge that can be used to make powerful predictions on
another level. Davis & Hersh refer to the social consequences of this process as the stochastization of the world. See
[(32)], p.19. The misuse of this exceptional power is often referred to as the tyranny of averages.

17

the sense of the thinkers of a hundred years ago. Instead, we have to content ourselves with
much more humble ambitions in our understanding of the human condition.
Unfortunately, this age of specialization has fostered an attitude where the attempts of interdisciplinary understanding have been largely abandoned - giving way to the opposite attitude, the
well-known way of the specialist. In one of his philosofical essays1 Science and Humanism,
Erwin Schrdinger discusses, among other things, the problems of specialization. He refers
the reader to an article of the Spanish philosopher Jos Ortega y Gasset, called La barbarie del
especialismo, where he paints the picture of the specialized scientist as the typical representative of the brute ignorant rabble - the hombre masa (mass-man) - who endangers the survival of
true civilization. In the translation of Schrdinger [(145), p.110], Ortega writes
He is a person who, of all the things that a truly educated person ought to know of, is familiar only with one
particular science, nay even of this science only that small portion is known to him in which he himself is
engaged in research. He reaches the point where he proclaims it a virtue not to take any notice of all that
remains outside the narrow domain he himself cultivates, and denounces as dilettantist the curiosity that aims
at the synthesis of all knowledge.
It comes to pass that he, secluded in the narrowness of his field of vision, actually succeeds in discovering
new facts and in promoting his science (which he hardly knows) and promoting along with it the integrated
human thought - which he with full determination ignores. How has anything like this been possible, and
how does it continue to be possible? For we must strongly underline the inordinateness of this undeniable
fact: experimental science has been advanced to a considerable extent by the work of fabulously mediocre
and even less than mediocre persons.

Leaving Ortega, Shrdinger continues:

I shall not continue the quotation, but I strongly recommend you to get hold of the book and continue for
yourself. In the twenty-odd years that have passed since its first publication, I have noticed very promising
traces of opposition to the deplorable state of affairs denounced by Ortega. Not that we can avoid specialization altogether; that is impossible if we want to get on. Yet the awareness that specialization is not a virtue but
an unavoidable evil is gaining ground, the awareness that all specialized research has real value only in the
context of the integrated totality of knowledge. The voices become fainter and fainter that accuse a man of
dilettantism who dares to think and speak and write on topics that require more than the special training for
which he is licenced or qualified. And any loud barking at such attempts comes from very special quarters
of two types - either very scientific or very unscientific quarters - and the reasons for the barking are in both
cases translucent.

A little later, Schrdinger emphazises that each lecturer should possess:

The ability to see the limits of his subject matter. In his teaching to make the students aware of these limits,
and to show them that beyond these limits forces come into play which are no longer entirely rational, but
arise out of life and human society itself.

Schrdinger closes his discussion of the specialist-generalist dilemma with the following
words: [(145), p. 112]:
Never lose sight of the role that your particular subject has within the great performance of the tragi-comedy
of human life; keep in touch with life - not so much with practical life as with the ideal background of life,
which is ever so much more important; and, Keep life in touch with you. If you cannot - in the long run - tell
everyone what you have been doing, your doing has been worthless.

1. Schrdinger, Science and Humanism, Lectures at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1950. [(145)].

18

Specialist

learning less & less

about more & more

learning more & more

about less & less
a problem
looking for
a solution

Generalist

Generalist

a solution
looking for
a problem

Specialist

knowing nothing
about everything

knowing everything
about nothing

Fig. 4. The Specialist / Generalist Duality.

Interpretation of Fig. (4): This is the dilemma facing every single individual: Am I going to dig
deeper and deeper - learning more and more about less and less, or am I going to look wider
and wider - learning less and less about more and more. In the first case, I end up as a specialist: knowing everything about nothing - and in the second as a generalist: knowing nothing
about everything. As a specialist, I have become a solution looking for a problem (= where can
I apply my knowledge), while as a generalist, I have become a problem looking for a solution
(= I see whats wrong, but not what can be done about it)..
Problem

Solution

Elimination

Symptom

Cause

dissolve

eliminate

Problem

Solution

Problem

Elimination

crystalize

transcend

Organization

Organization

Fig. 5. The Problem/Solution versus the Problem/Elimination pattern.

19

Interpretation of Figure (5): The pattern is concerned with the difference between solving and
eliminating problems. Solving problems has the effect of making their symptoms dissolve,
which means to disappear in solution - just like salt-crystals in water. However, from this
solution the symptoms of the problem can be easily crystallized in various ways. This tends to
crystallize (= institutionalize) any organization that has been formed in order to solve problems.
Eliminating problems means dealing with causes instead of symptoms - which tends to transcend the problems as well as the organization . In fact, eliminating the problems dissolves the
organization - instead of crystallizing it. Instead of becoming institutionalized, the organization
dissolves into solution - from which it can be conveniently re-crystallized if the problem
should ever show up again.

dissolve
Criminal

Legal System
Jail

crystalize

Economic Disfunctionality

Organized
Fig. 6. Part of the Problem/Solution pattern applied to the Judicial System.

Interpretation of Figure (6): The judicial system is seen as a way to solve the problems of crime
by confining the criminals in jail. This activity is supported by the legal system, and the re-crystallization of convicted criminals is assured by various forms of economic disfunctionality,
most of all the natural reluctance to employ an ex-convict. Many criminals live their lives
within this loop (= volta), while others organize and set up some kind of legal front in order to
break the cycle. In this way the organized criminal is seen as a form of evolutionary outgrowth
- supported by the problem/solution pattern.
We are all familiar with the highly complex and intricate levels of technology that surround us
in our every day lives. In fact, we acknowledge this awareness whenever we say that we live in
a high-tech society. However, we also live in a time when such cold and nerdy things as mathematics, physics and chemistry do not seem to attract enough interest among the young to be
able to compete with more hot and trendy things - often concerned with how to express oneself
creatively by using various forms of electronic media.1
Hence, in our days, the problem of maintaining the quality of the educational process has
become closely linked to the problem of raising and maintaining interest in science and technology. Obviously our high-tech-society is in desperate need of its share of dedicated nerds.
It needs them in order to perform functions that are vital for our very survival. To put it bluntly,
we simply need to keep our bridges up, our planes in the air and our pressure-tanks sealed
tight, to name but a few of our non-negotiable needs. We must cater to these needs in order to

1. This phenomenon seems to be related to what the trend-guru Malcolm MacLaren refers to as the ultimate

Karaoke [see Dagens Nyheter, March 28, 1997].

20

maintain our high-tech material lifestyle - the basic tonal of our technology. And this doesnt
just happen by itself; it requires an army of willing and able engineers that are dedicated to the
quality of their competence and profession, which means loving that cold and nerdy sciencestuff. Within the entire western culture, there are consistent indications that this army-of-engineers is finding it progressively harder to enlist suitable recruits. These have to be found among
young people who are willing and able to dedicate themselves to developing their mental comprehension concerning what is going on in the real world, and not just devoting themselves to
living out their feelings by being creative in one way or another.
These difficulties are related to one of the classical patterns of academia - the Despise&Stigmatize pattern of Figure (7), which underlies the familiar academic tension between science and
humaniora. It has its roots in the division between humanists (= disciples of humaniora) and
scientists (= disciples of science). A division which implicitly indicates that a scientist is a kind
of non-human(ist), indicates a very unfortunate choice of terminology. In my mind
Opinion 5:

The dichotomy of humanist versus scientist is contributing towards the

strengthening of non-human forces of technology - making man adapt to the
machine instead of vice versa1.

An attempt to capture some aspects of the traditional animosity between science and
humaniora is presented in Figure (7).
Interpretation of Figure (7): Within academia, the subdiciplines called science and humaniora
are viewed as interlocked in a destructive pattern of contempt and demonization: The devotees
of science despise the disciples of humaniora, and the latter reply by stigmatizing the former,
and depriving them of their social, emotional and sexual value as human beings. This pattern
creates the concept of the nerd as an encapsulation of un-sexy-ness.
The rock-part of the pattern is a free-association on top of the pattern - representing a play of
words that has a certain relationship to the subject matter of the pattern. Einstein and Frankenstein are mentionend here as rolemodels for the un-understandable, respectively the irresistable urge to find out - both of which are qualities that are presently associated with the nerd.
As personal characters, however, both of them were rather atypical nerds, and are reknowned to
have asserted quite an attraction on the opposite sex. Of course, the actors playing Frankenstein
have all been quite sexy - a quality that has been attributed even to his monster!
So the rock-part of the pattern breaks down at this point, which illustrates how hard it is to
apply any thought-pattern to people.

1. In fact, bringing humanists and esteticists into the IT creation process is a major purpose of CID, thereby
strengthening the humanistic influence over the design of information technology in general.

21

Academia
despise
Science

Humaniora
stigmatize

Computational

Rational

Non

Emotional

Relational

Human

my heart
is a rock

Scientist

Artist

my heart
rocks

heart
of rock

Nerdy

Sexy

rock
at heart

silicon
rocks
I am
a rock

Luke Warm

Cool

Hot

Einstein
Springsteen
Frankenstein

hot & cool

rocks

I am
rock

Fig. 7. The Scientist-Humanist dichotomy in terms of the Despise&Stigmatize pattern.

In accordance with Figure (7), I venture

Opinion 6:

At the root of todays educational dilemma is the fact that the engineer of old
has become the enginerd of today - and nerds just arent sexy enough to work
as role-models for young people.

As pointed out above, the word nerd is a rather modern linguistic invention, which encapsulates
almost everything that is totally non-sexy. Hence, it was not invented back in the glorious old
days of the engineer, when it would have been utterly unthinkable in its present connotation,
since it would have conflicted with the underlying role-model. In fact, the emergence of the
word nerd constitutes in itself a form of linguistic reflection of this role-model transformation. I have taught and researched in mathematics and computer science at the Royal Institute of
Technology (KTH) since 1967. During this time I have witnessed the gradual transformation of
the classical role-model of the engineer, a type of silent, problem-solving, social hero, into
the present enginerd, a socially ridiculed and ostracized type of person that never gets laid and
has severe problems with handling basic aspects of everyday reality, like buying decent clothes
and handling bad breath.

22

Moreover, it seems to me that

Opinion 7:

The computer represents a kind of bridge between the nerdy and the cool.
Basically, the more you know about how to make it work - the nerdier you
are, and the more you use it just to do your own creative stuff (like music,
art or poetry) - the cooler (or hotter) you are.

Therefore, I think that

Opinion 8:

23

The computer has the potential to become a useful ally in the de-nerdification
process that is necessary in order to reinstall scientific interests in the minds
of the young.

6
6.1

The Educational Crisis - The Carrot Rape

The Educational Disfunctionality

Today most nations acknowledge that there is something fundamentally wrong with their
school-system. In almost every democratic country in the world this opinion has ventured to the
forefront. During the dawning of the information age - at a time when education is globally recognized as the most important strategic investment in the future - more and more young people
are failing to absorb the necessary knowledge in the form presented by the countrys school
systems. The performance problems seem to appear on all levels of the educational system,
although they are most clearly visible in the compulsory sectors. One is bound to ask: why is
this so?
During the old times the schools were run on the classical mixture of the carot and the whip leaning heavily towards the latter. The classical realskola (secondary school) and especially
the gymnasium (=highshool) often took on the form of a mental torture-and-humiliation arena,
that was brought down upon you as soon as you were caught not having done your homework
and knowing your answers. This kind of school system has been vivdly portrayed in the Swedish film Hets, and this is what I mean by a school based on the whip. I was educated in the old,
letter-graded school system which still carried those basic traits. The thought of coming to
school and not being able to answer for all of my home assignments still raises a vivid feeling
of terror inside me.
I am greatful that my daughter doesnt seem to suffer the same kind of anxieties. On the other
hand, I cannot help noticing how easy it seems to be for her to find excuses - in order to get off
easy - not having to strain her capacities beyond the humble bounds that are expected by her
school-teachers.
In short, the schools of today, while still compulsory, have been deprived of the whip as a pedagogical tool. In my opinion, this is the real reason behind the continuing outbreak of schoolreforms that has been shaking the educational system ever since the sixties.
The abandoning of the whip was a necessary consequence of the victories of the human-rights
movement as applied to children; the inevitable outcome of the school democratization process. This evolutionary process has resulted in several analogous changes - as e.g. the criminalization of child-spanking.
Hence, due to the gradual evolutionary disappearance of the whip, the school-reforms have all
been aimed at polishing up the carrots in various ways - in order to make them more palatable
to the educational customers. The problem with this outlook is that many customers are not
directly driven by their desire to consume - to put it mildly - but rather by their desire to endure
- endure an endless torture of uninteresting and repetitious activities that they didnt ask for in
the first place! And on top of that, you have to put up with people that are payed to pretend that
its all fun and interesting - and seldom dare to confront the fact they are responsible for confining you, since your presence is required by public law.
Its a bit like being force-fed with carrots, which is why I will refer to this process (educational
design-pattern) as the carrot rape. An increasing number of young people react to it by aban-

24

doning their learning-projects (losing their interest as the term goes) - often finding refuge in
the willingly awaiting arms of the pop-industry.
In fact, the word techno constitutes in itself an illustrative example of this process. I tend to
associate techno with techno-logic, which conjures up images of various engineering
dreams - heroic deeds to the benefit of the progress of mankind that I read and fantazised about
as a child. I can still remember the feeling of exitement looking at the coloured drawings of a
nuclear reactor or a particle accelerator. They were illlustrations out of a physics book I had
received as a premium. I was 14 at the time, and this was the most delicious nerdie-numnum I had ever seen. In fact, it significantly influenced my future by contributing to the background of interest that later made me enlist at KTH to become a civilinjenjr and teknisk
fysiker.
For the young people of today, the word techno carries totally different connotations. I think
it would be safe to predict that most of them would associate techno with a certain style of
music - often connected to the tech-nologic (= tech-lunatic) of a rave-party. Unfortunately,
the way things stand at the moment, a high-tech-nological rave-party can be a lot more engaging than some (nerdy) techno-logical contraption.
It is the transformation from logic to nologic which is most disconcerting and alarming in
the process described above. By consistently disregarding the realities of the present teaching/
learning configurations, and focusing on getting the job done (with or without the cooperation
of the pupils) the carrot-rape has played a decicive role in producing a lost generation of
knowledge-seekers. Thousands upon thousands of young minds that instead of devoting
themselves to strengthening their mental faculties, are dedicated to various aspects of the
Brick-in-the-Wall philosophy so adequately expressed by Pink Floyd: We dont want no education - we dont want no thought control!1
The following gedanken-experiment illustrates the present deplorable state of affairs: if the
education of art was to be structured like the education of mathematics, it would be all about
how to cut stone and mix paint. Not a single picture, to convey a sense of meaing - let alone
beauty, would be shown until the student had mastered all the necessary techniques to paint a
similar picture himself! In mathematics education we do not generally deal with theorems that
we cannot fully explain and prove to the students, whatever that is. When it all comes down
to dust, a mathematical proof is just an argument that is presented in such a way that it can
convince the leading experts of the field. Such a proof is often of little or no interest to the student - especially during the early stages of his contact with the corresponding mathematical theorem. What you need in order to promote your understanding is help to conceptualize the
situation that is described by the theorem - to be able to paint your own mental pictures of what
is going on. If this situation awakes enough of your curiosity, then you might be interested in
finding out why things works the way the theorem describes. Then is the time to provide you
with a proof, or - even better - for you to work out your own!

1. Pink Floyd, Brick in the Wall, 1977. To illustrate the absurdity of the present attitude towards mental knowledge, just imagine the corresponding outcry in the material domain: We dont want no physical education, we dont want no mus-

cular control. The present gym-hysteria is proof enough that such an outcry would find it hard to attract
many followers.

25

This, I believe, illustrates one of the most fundamental errors that we commit as mathematical
educators: We present you - the student of mathematics - with the theorems far too unproblematically, and the proofs far too early, with two major negative consequences: First, your understanding is diminished since you have not been provided with the adequate time to
conceptualize the mathematical prerequisites for the theorem in question.1
Second, your interest is diminished, since the period of curiosity is lost. As a student, you are
not given the chance to know what is going on - whithout at the same time being toldwhy it is
going on. If such periods of curiosity are well supported by the educational system, they have
the potential to create an intellectual tension - a kind of mental itch - that may get your mind
off the ground and eventually launch it into thought-space once and for all!

6.2

Educational Design Patterns - School Duties versus School Rights

Many teachers still seem to implement the pattern of the traditional teacher-preacher - discussed in Figure (8). It goes well with the compulsory-learning pattern which is another essential component of the overall pattern of the educational process, especially in its early parts. It
also reinforces the employment-security attitude that is inherent in the tenure-based pattern of
permanent teaching positions. Getting a permanent staff position (getting your tenure) is still
considered to be the main measure of qualification within the teaching community.
At the same time, the Teacher-Tenure/Learner-Duty pattern of Figure (8) is consistent with the
following attutude: Since the learners have to listen to you anyway, you might as well tell them
a thing or two that you think they should know about - whether they like it or not. This may in
fact be one of its major advantages as opposed to the purely interest driven ConsultingTeacherResource pattern of Figure (9). Sometimes you need a push to get you through some dull part
of your journey towards knowledge. How to supply such pushes is a problem that is associated
with any purely interest-driven educational system.

Security

Employee

Prisoner

Compulsory

Tenure

Preacher

Pupil

School Duty
Minimal
learning efforts:

Life-long
teaching:
Agent 007
with a right
to kill interest

Teacher

Learner
Course

Doing time
in return for
a degree

Fig. 8. The Teacher-Tenure / Learner-Duty educational pattern.

1. This leads to a tendency to memorize the proof, just as with any algorithm.

26

Interpretation of Figure (8):This is the traditional pattern of life-long teaching and compulsory
learning which is practiced in most forms of earlier education of today. The teacher is seen as a
tenured (= securely employed) preachure, who can teach as he or she wants to without having
to worry about whether the learners like it or not - at least not as long as their signs of dislike
can be kept within socially controllable bounds. This role-model is referred to as agent 007
with a right to kill interest.
The learners are seen as pupils with a number of school duties which makes them prisoners of
a compulsory detention system. In this way they adopt a strategy of minimal learning efforts doing their time in return for a degree.

Knowledge

Consultant

Seeker

Interest

Pedagogical

Resource

Student

School Right
Life-long
learning:

Requested
teaching:
Teacher
Man lr s lnge
man har elever

Learner
Course

Developing
your interests

Fig. 9. The Teacher-Resource / Learner-Right educational pattern.

Interpretation of Figure (9): This is the emerging educational pattern that characterizes much of
the present course-development for industry, as well as the many-fold activities of various kinds
of study-circles. The teaching is not life-long, but rather performed on request. The teacher is
seen as a pedagogical resource which is a form of knowledge consultant. When somebody(ies)
are interested to learn, then is the time to teach. Man lr s lnge man har elever! ( You teach
as long as somebody is learning.)
On the complementary side of the pattern, the learners are seen as students with a number of
school rights, a kind of knowledge seekers basing their studies on interest.
The effective implementation of educational systems founded on the pattern of Figure (9), will
demand different ways of thinking about the role of the teacher. In the educational systems of
tomorrow, the switch-boarding possibilities of cyberspace will used in order to connect knowledge-sources of great quality with learners of great quantity - in order to promote knowledgetransfer strong interest and high strong. Within such an environment, the role of the traditional
teacher can be split up in - at least - a three-fold of different aspects, according to the pattern
presented in Figure (10). Here the functioning of the teacher is split up into the three different
roles of teacher-preacher, teacher-gardener and teacher-plumber.

27

Teacher

Preacher

Gardner

Plumber

Master

Pruner

Contactor

you teach
as long
as somebody
is learning

you assist
in developing
each individual
learning strategy

you find
someone
to discuss
the question

fascination

Source

methodology

opportunity

Strategyst

Opportunist

Knowledge
quality
measured by
number of
given answers

quality measured
by number of
raised questions

quality
measured by
number of
lost questions

Fig. 10. The Preacher/Gardner/Plumber KindOf Teacher.

Interpretation of Figure (10): The Teacher-Preacher/Gardner/Plumber pattern expresses the

three different dimensions of teaching that correspond to the Teacher-Resource/Learner-Right
pattern of Figure (9).
The teacher-preacher is still in the picture, but now as a hired prophet (= consultant) who is a
master of some kind of knowledge that is interesting to others. This knowledge source is driven
by fascination and teaches as long as somebody else is learning. The quality is measured in
terms of the number of given answers.
The teacher-gardner is the pruner, who nurtures and prunes the growing knowledge of the
learners. The teacher-gardner assists in developing each learners own individual learning
strategy. As a knowledge strategyst, the teacher-gardner concentrates on methodology and is
measured - in terms of performance quality - by the number of raised questions.
The teacher-plumber represents the contact with the external world. Whenever a learner question is unsatisfactorily processed, the teacher-plumber finds someone to discuss the question.
This someone is most often another source of knowledge that was not known - or available -

28

to the corresponding teacher-gardner. In this way the teacher-plumber creates opportunity for
learning, and is therefore described as a knowledge opportunist. The performance quality of a
teacher-plumber is measured in terms of the number of lost questions.
6.3

Examination versus Insamination

Vi r lika prglade p skolan som gsslingarna p gsen1, - according to Bodil Jnsson. One
of the things that we are most hung up on is the systems of examination.
Every experienced teacher knows that the main pedagogical problem of a classroom teaching
configuration is caused by the differences of intellectual background among the students. In
fact, it is a large part of the classical teaching challenge to be able to handle these differences
with as little negative impact as possible on the quality of the course. The problem of differences in states of preparation increases in size and importance through every step of the educational system, since they operate with a cumulative effect: what one didnt understand during
previous courses makes it impossible to comprehend what is going on in the present one.
The quantitative differences inherent in the basic grading system have developed from 7 (letterbased grades), through 5 (relative grades) down to 4 (knowledge-related grades). At the same
time the through-put pressure has increased by at least an order of magnitude. This has
resulted in the well-known grade-inflation that has accompanied the corresponding weakening of the whip as a tool of pedagogical importance. The old letter-based grades were pretty
stable in their role of solid educational currency. However, after the paradigm-shift in favour
of the relative grades that took place during the sixties (1963-69), the grade-inflation picked
up2. The effect was to drive the system into the wall and short-circuit its dynamic range. This
effect became visible in the seventies, when courses began to appear with entrance requirements of 5.0 grade average - while at the same time 5 being the highest possible grade obtainable within the relative system. The de facto educational configuration was in fact conveying the
following message: If you plan to succeed in entering this course or program, you must not be
dynamically gradable, i.e. your grade must not fall within the dynamical range of our gradesystem.
The dream of studentexamen for my children - the white cap (den vita mssan) on their
heads - has been a decisive factor in shaping the succession of post-war educational reforms
within the Swedish school-system . When I graduated from high-school in 1966, I passed the
studentexamen in the old, traditional, letter-graded way. The concept of your passing, as
well as the level of your grades, were decided in cooperation between your subject-teachers and
a special group of so called censors - that arranged special interrogation procedures to which

1. We are just as hung up on the structure of our school system as the gooslings on the mother goose.
2. This historical development carries strong similarities to the corresponding evolution of economics. In the old

BrettonWoods-period of 1944-71, prices were stable and inflation almost non-existant. But when Nixon
closed the golden window, and abolished the fixed exchange-rate between the dollar and the gold back in
1971, he built inflation and other types of chain-letter-like instabilities into the economic system itself. In taking this historic decision he did, however, accomplish much more than that. In fact, he created the logical prerequisites for a totally different type of economy, the so called finacial economy, which is the totally
dominating form of economic activity in the world of today. In the trans-national sector, the financial economy outnumbers the so called real economy (the trading of goods and services) by a factor of about 50 to 1.
See e.g. Kurtzman, The Death of Money, [(93)].

29

you were subjected during your last day at school. These interrogations were by no means only
formal procedures, devoid of dangerous possibilities. Of course, most of the pupils ended up
passing - but some of them did not. They were kuggade (= rejected) and kicked out of
school after 3 years of study without any form of final diploma at all! In fact, this is what happened to an old class-mate of mine - who, by the way, is now a quite sucessful engineer!
As an example of the reformation of the high-school curriculum, let me mention the old
teknisk linje (for the engineers), which has evolved and branched out into something like
the fordonsteknisk linje (for the machos), the mediateknisk linje (for the trendies), the
vrdteknisk linje (for the softies), the naturvrdsteknisk linje (for the greenies), and the
hrvrdsteknisk linje (for the pussy-cats and the gays). And while performing this amazing
transformational feat, it has remained the old teknisk linje (for the nerds)1.
It is a sad and chilling fact that for the last few years, the Swedish high-school educational system has been demanding a higher level of theoretical preparation (= better grades) from a hairdressing apprentice than from an apprentice of science or engineering. In my opinion, this is
another alarm-signal which indicates the serious malfunctioning of both the grading-system (in
particular) and the educational system (as a whole).
Nowadays, the choice of educational program is more interest-driven than ever before. Young
people choose their education more and more out of interest, and less and less out of strategic
decisions regarding their future careers. And - lets face it - it is simply more popular to become
a hair-dresser, than to become a scienctist or an engineer! As I stated in the introduction, during
the three decades of my own educational activities, I have witnessed the gradual transformation
of the classical engineer, into the present enginerd.
The latest grade-reform, (LP-94) has introduced so called kunskaps-relaterade betyg (knowledge-oriented grades). They consist of 4 different formal levels, nnuEjGodknd, Godknd,
VlGodknd and MycketVlGodknd, as well as one informal level called streck, which
means not gradable. The latter grade is not supposed to be given at all (in theory), but is the
one that seems to be increasing most (in practice).
The new knowledge-oriented grade system has been hailed by its advocates as an antidote to
some of the relative perversities of the old (relative) grade system. However, due to the
absence of a well-structured, centrally supported knowledge-specification scheme, the different
schools have been instructed to (= given the freedom to) supply their own interpretations as to
what is required in order to receive the corresponding level of grade. The effects of this type of
decentralization process (kommunaliseringsprocess) are especially desastrous to the upper
parts of the grade-system, the distinction between VlGodknd and MycketVlGodknd,
where almost no guidance is supplied by the central authorities. This opens up a new kind of
grading-relativity, where the different schools compete for the brightest and most easily manageble pupils by supplying the highest grade-level per input work-hour. This creates a win-win
situation, where the pupils get their educational advancement breaks while the school earns
some easy revenue. The overall looser is the quality of content, that vital and seemingly nonmeasurable entity which real education is all about.
1. The psychological targeting (= the mlgruppsspecifikation) of these respective course-programs is meant

to be taken non-seriously (= as a joke).

30

To put it bluntly, in the schools of today, the grade-systems are rapidly de-grading into a competitive advantage in the process of attracting students. Hence it is only natural that companies
have started to look less at the examination grades of their candidates for employment, and
more on their insamination abilities, i.e. their ability to display enough skills in some form of
entrance test (insamination). It often takes the form of an exjobb or some kind of projektanstllning to show us what you can do.
So, what can be done about the present examination problem? It seems to me that the natural
thing to do is for the schools and universities to go along with the leading employers, sharpening their entrance tests (insaminations) to the courses, while at the same time weakening their
exit-tests (examinations) from the courses. It should be considered a merit just to have been
accepted into a course, since this means that you have passed its thorough insaminations.
Teaching such a well-insaminated course would seem like a paradise-dream to most of the
teachers of today. Just imagine - a whole classroom full of interested students that are well prepared for the course!
Of course, such insamination structures would require a lot closer cooperation between the different teachers and institutions involved in designing the curriculum, forcing them to deal with
how their own particular piece of the story connects with others - thereby fitting it into the
larger picture. This is probably the main obstacle to be overcome in such an attempt, since it
conflicts with the institutional turf-wars that are only far too frequent within the academic
world.
6.4

The Structure of Present Mathematics Education

The present mathematics education is heavily influenced by the Problem/Solution pattern. This
pattern appears within the educational process in at least three different ways - as illustrated
below in Figures (11), (12) and (13).

Pedagogical System

dissolve
Conceptual Difficulty

behave or degrade

Algorithmic Ability

crystalize
Anticipated

Understanding Disfunctionality
nurturing the difficulties

isA
Mathematics
is difficult

because

I never understood it
when I was at school

Fig. 11. The Problem/Solution pattern applied to early mathematics education.

Interpretation of Figure (11): The pattern describes how conceptual difficulties (= concept-formation-problems) in mathematics education are solved by promoting algorithmic ability, i.e.
by teaching various forms of arithmetic schemes in a more or less fundamentalist fashion.

31

This dissolution process is seen as driven by a pedagogical system that operates according to
the principle of behave or degrade, i.e. the traditional math-test-metric. This leads to severe
forms of understanding disfunctionality, which in turn drives the crystalisation of the conceptual difficulties. By nurturing the difficulties the loop creates anticipated conceptual difficulties,
which are summarized in the biggest mental block of all - mathematics is difficult. This conclusion is here seen as an effect of the (be)cause: I never understood it when I was at school. This
is a natural form of defense-reaction that ties in with the pattern of Figure (14), which describes
the filtering of the educational system and expresses the view that when you do not understand
during the later stages of your education, you often end up teaching in the earlier stages.
In fact, the early stages of mathematics education are performed according to the prevailing
pedagogical version of the well-known propaganda principle:
If you repeat a lie a large enough number of times it becomes true .

The version of this pattern that is applied to early mathematics education could be formulated:
If you repeat a calculation a large enough number of times, you learn it 1.

The pattern of Figure (11), which is characteristic of earlier education, has two complementary
correspondances - one within the computational industry [Figure (12)] and one within mathematical research [Figure (13)]. These three versions of the problem-solution pattern cooperate
in reinforcing the opinion that mathematics is difficult.

Extracting the
mathematical
skeleton

Problem

Formulation

Computing the
algorithmic
solution
Solution
Computational Industry

dissolve
Conceptual Difficulty

solve by computation

Algorithmic Ability

crystalize
Anticipated

Understanding Disfunctionality
marketing the difficulties

isA
Mathematics
is difficult

but

We can help you

to solve your problems

Fig. 12. The Problem/Solution pattern applied to the computational industry.

1. i.e. you learn to repeat it.

32

Interpretation of Figure (12): The pattern of Figure (11) is here supported by a similar pattern,
involving the computational industry. Again, conceptual difficulties are dissolved by computation, which focuses the mathematical activites on problem solution (= computing algorithmic
solutions), and away from problem formulation (= extracting the mathematical skeleton). This
conceptual confusion creates the understanding disfunctionality which helps to re-crystalize the
conceptual difficulties. By marketing the difficulties, the anticipated conceptual difficulty of
mathematics itself is firmly established: Mathematics is difficult, but we can help you to solve
your problems.

Publicational System

dissolve
Conceptual Difficulty

Academic Status

crystalize
Anticipated

publish or perish
Understanding Disfunctionality

nurturing the difficulties

isA
Mathematics
is difficult

because

I understand it, and

I am smarter than you

Fig. 13. The Problem/Solution pattern applied to mathematics research.

Interpretation of Figure (13): A third variation on the problem-solution pattern appears in mathematical research. This pattern shows the conceptual difficulties being dissolved into academic
status, driven by a publicational system that operates according to the well-known principle of
publish or perish. This leads to another kind of understanding disfunctionality - where research
articles in mathematics are written - not in order to be genuinely understood, but rather in order
to pee in an academic habitat, which means to fend of intruders and stake an intellectual
claim which is as large as possible. This leads to the nurturing of difficulties for yet another
reason - namely in order to maintain the status of the professional mathematician: Mathematics
is difficult - because - I understand it, and I am smarter than you.
The Discriminator-Questions pattern of Figure (14) has a profound impact on the educational
situation in general, but its effects are probably most pronounced in mathematics. The aspect of
the pattern that concerns this issue is the following: People who did not understand during
their later education in mathematics (= higher courses) are recruited to teach the earlier parts.

33

Later Education

understand?
yes

no

make money?

make money?
no

yes

yes

Academia

Business

Business

creative?

creative?

creative?

yes
Researcher

no
Teacher

yes
Consultant

no

no

Employee

no

creative?
yes

no

yes

Artist

socially conscious?
yes

no

Teacher
Fig. 14. The Discriminator-Questions pattern.

Interpretation of Figure (14): This pattern shows the filtering influence of a series of discriminator-questions that confront people that participate in the later (= higher) part of the educational process. The first discriminator is given by the question:Do you understand?. If the
answer is yes, the next discriminator-question is Do you want to make money?. If you
answer this question by no, then you probably go into some form of Academia, where you are
confronted with the third discriminator-question: Are you creative?. If your answer to this
question is yes, you become a researcher, otherwise you become a (academic) teacher. This is
the pattern that operates behind the well-known academic contempt that the successful
researcher has for the sucessful pedagog. Within academia, if you are a good teacher, you are
considered by default to be a bad researcher - until you have delivered evidence to the contrary.
Going back to the second question, if you did understand your later education, but you do want
to make money, then you go into business. In this case, if you are creative, you become a consultant ( inventor) and market your skills in various ways, whereas if you are not, you become
an employee. In both cases you work as a specialist (= dealing with special problems) - the difference is mainly the form (= security) of employment: F-skatt for the consultant, A-skatt for
the employed specialist.

34

Going back to the first question, if you didnt understand your later education, but you do want
to make money, then you also go into business. If you are not creative, you get employed as a
rutinist ( clerk). This is a person that takes part in operating the everyday schedule of things
- as opposed to a specialist, that takes care of special situations.
If, on the other hand you are creative, you become an artist, and often a commersially sucessful
artist too. Going back one level, if you didnt want to make money, but you are still creative,
then you also become an artist, but in this case you are not so commercially successful as
before. Instead you realize your inner artistic potential in various ways, often enduring substantial forms of economic hardships on the way.
Finally, if you didnt understand your higher education, didnt want to make money and werent
creative, then you are subjected to the fourth question: Are you socially conscious?. If your
answer is yes, then you become a teacher in the earlier parts of the educational process.
Opinion 9:

The Discriminator-Questions pattern of Figure (14) has a bearing on why

early teaching has become so dominated by women. The social form of intelligence1 displayed in the traditional female role-model is very lowly valued
by the economic society, which is reflected in the low salaries associated with
early teaching.

An important aspect of the Discriminator-Questions pattern is the order in which the questions
are asked. In the pattern of Figure(14), the question concerning social intelligence is the one
that is asked last, which reflects its lesser degree of estimated importance. Since there are four
different questions represented, there is 24 different ways to order them. Each one gives a different filter of discrimination. It is an interesting exercise to play around with the order of these
questions and reflect a bit on the corresponding labeling of categories.
In connection with the all too familiar subject of contempt for teaching, I am reminded of the
following statement from one of the recipients of the 1983 Right Livelihood Award. In his
acceptance-speach he declared - with a glimpse in his eye - that:
There are three kinds of people. First, there are those who know. And then there are those who dont know,
and they teach. And then there are those who dont know how to teach, and they teach education.:

Although he ment it as a joke, there is an underlying aspect that has to be taken seriously in any
non-trivial discussion of the performance of the educational system as a whole.

1. See e.g. Howard Gardners discussion on the different dimensions of intelligence .

35

7
7.1

First Class Mathematics

What is Mathematics?

The word mathematics is said to go back to Pythagoras, who called his most advanced disciples mathematikoi ().1 In the present context, this word will be interpreted in the
following way:
Definition 4:

Mathematics is the study of the totality of structures that the human brain is
able to perceive: Mathematics = Hom(Universe, Brain).

Within the langugage of itself, mathematics can be described as the study of homomorphisms
between the brain and its environment - including the brain itself2. Life is structure, and since
mathematics is the language of structure, it is the language of life, the ultimate ruler of the subspace within which life can be talked and reasoned about.
Opinion 10:

Mathematics can never be taught.

It can only be given the opportunity to grow.

Mathematics is a feeling, a sensitivity and an awareness of structure, which is planted in each

and every one of us, like a seed of the cosmic consciousness. To practice the art of mathematics
is to be involved in a purely mental process, which has surprisingly strong connections to the
surrounding physical reality.3
When one is developing ones mathematical understanding, both halves of the brain work
together in the process of constructing combinations of mental phantasies that are tested for
logical functionality. The right half of the brain is phantasizing, and the left part is analyzing
and testing the logic of the suggested ideas. Only the ideas that survive the logical examination
are elevated to the status of truths. Mathematics can therefore be described as logically tested
fantasies. It offers a powerful means for its devotees to overcome some of their sensous limitations and contemplate the inner profoundity of the structure of the universe.
Nowadays, the preferred style of presenting mathematics is in the form of theories. Each mathematical theory consists of axioms, definitions, theorems and proofs.
Definition 5:

The mathematical axioms are the initial truths - the holy syntax which
expresses a belief that cannot be questioned or analyzed within the theory
itself.

Definition 6:

A model of a theory fills its axioms (= basic syntax) with meaning (=

semantics) by providing an example where the axioms of the theory express
an actual behaviour pattern of the elements of the model.

1. Heath, History of Greek Mathematics, [(68), Vol I, p.11].

2. ones self-image, as it is often called.

3. See e.g. Wigner, On the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the physical sciences, [(171)].

36

Definition 7:

The mathematical definitions introduce new concepts

as formal combinations of the old ones.

A good definition packages a modular thought-pattern into a single concept with a crisply
defined interface to the others. This supports the conceptual calibration process that is necessary to increase the precision of communication, as well as to counteract the onset of combinatorial complexity.
Definition 8:

Fact 2:

A mathematical truth is called a theorem if it is considered important

enough to be an end in itself, a lemma if it is considered as a means to an
end, and a corollary if it is considered to be an obvious consequence of
some other theorem(s).

A mathematical theorem always has the form A B,

which reads: If A is true, so is B.

The mathematical term is: A implies B, and the arrow is called the (logical) implication
operator. The statement A B says nothing about the truth of either A or B, it only states a
relation between the factual conditions under which A respectively B are true: the former situation cannot occur without the latter occuring simultaneously. This is why Bertrand Russel
referred to mathematics as:
The science where we neither know what we are talking about, nor whether what we say is true or not.
Definition 9:

A mathematical proof is a logical chain of reasoning steps that satisfies the

demand of rigour of the leading experts of the corresponding field. The
ideal is to carry out a proof completely within the formal system, or at least
to become convinced that this kind of formalization could - in principle - be
achieved!

illusion
Mathematics

Magic
Religion
Philosophy
Science

Fig. 15. Four different levels of mathematical usage.

Interpretation of Figure (15): There are four natural ways of reasoning - that correspond to
different ways to reason about things and different things to reason about. They are called
respectively Science, Philosophy, Religion and Magic. Taken in that order they form a sequence
of successive loosening of constraints. (Figure (15)). In science , all concepts are strictly

37

defined and narrowed down by complicated calibration protocols. In philosophy, these protocols are substantially loosened, and each person is given the right to ponder the deeper questions of life in a more speculative way. Religion introduces a new element - faith - a concept
that philosophy tries to avoid at all costs. This makes it possible to handle a totally different set
of questions by having faith in various concepts connected to them. If we please our God(s)
then (s)he (they) will create some good magic for us and protect us from the bad magic that surrounds us. At the top, magic represents the final state of constraint-loosening - where we are
victims to the ultimate illusion: the magical trick of anything goes.
In accordance with these four levels of thinking, there are the corresponding four different levels of using mathematics: mathematics can be used for scientific applications, philosophical
illustrations, religious invocations and magical illusions. As illustrated in Figure (15):
Definition 10:

7.2

The usage of mathematics in science is considered to represent an application, in philosophy an illustration, in religion an invocation and in magic an
illusion.

The First Class Mathematics Project

The First Class Mathematics Project aims to convey an image of mathematics as such a double-brained mental activity as has been described above. It is of the utmost importance that all
students are encouraged and supported in their attempts to develop their own mathematical fantasies. This is only possible if they are confronted with interesting examples of good mathematics during every stage of their mathematical education. An illustrative example of what
such a confrontation can imply is given by the so called Rubriks Cube or just the cube,
which was such a fascinating mental torment to the kids a couple of years ago. They got into
doing their own advanced forms of algorithmic mathematics - but only during their breaks and
free-time from a school-system that was totally incapable to realize what was going on, let
alone to make use of it in order to promote the mathematical interest of the students.
By the aid of modern computers, many exiting mathematical structures can be animated and
brought to interactive life in ways which open up new and exiting pedagogical possibilities.
Today there is a large number of interactive mathematical tools that empower a student to
explore mathematical concepts in a dialectical way, i.e. in a dialogue with the computer program.
7.3

The Concept of Symmetry

The feeling of esthetic harmony in a geometric shape or a pattern has to do with its particular
mixture of regularity and irregularity. In ordinary language we refer to the regularity of an
object as its symmetry. When we talk about e.g. the symmetry of a face, we mean that there is
a plane that can be imagined right down the middle of the nose, such that if one carried out a
reflection in this plane, one part of the face would reflect into the other part, while the face as a
whole would remain (approximately) invariant. These ideas form the basis for a mathematical
definition of the concept of symmetry:

38

Definition 11:

Symmetry is invariance under some form of change (= transformation).

In their book Fearful Symmetry - is God a Geometer, Ian Stewart and Martin Golubitsky, carry
out a very enlightening discussion on the subject of symmetry:1
The great physicist Pierre Curie is best remembered for his work, with his wife Marie, on radioactivity, leading to the discovery of the elements radium and polonium. But Curie is also remembered for his realization
that many physical processes are governed by principles of symmetry. In 1894, in the Journal de Physique
Thorique et Appliqu, Curie gave two logically equivalent statements of a general principle from the folklore of mathematical physics:
Principle 1: If certain causes produce certain effects,

then the symmetries of the causes reappear in the effects produced.

If certain effects reveal a certain asymmetry,
then this asymmetry will be reflected in the causes that give rise to them.

These two statements usually go by the name of Curies principle. They are often referred to in
the popular phrase Dissymmetry makes the phenomenon. But under certain conditions, symmetric causes can have asymmetric effects, which directly contradicts this celebrated principle
of Curie. As an example of this, Stewart and Golubitsky discuss the shape of a splash:
Our favourite oddball science book is On Growth and Form by dArcy Thompson. If youve never read this
provocative and penetrating treatise, get a copy from somewhere - though be warned, part of its appeal is an
outmoded charm, so dont take it too seriously. Thompson was a pioneer of the idea that there are mathematical features to biological form. Prominently displayed at the very front of his book there is a wonderful and
slightly disturbing picture of a drop of milk hitting the surface of a bowl, filled with the same liquid; the
splash is frozen by high-speed photography, for us to contemplate at leisure. When raindrops hit a puddle, or
inkblots hit paper, they must do something similar. Have you ever wondered what shape a splash is? It looks
like a crown.
From the point of impact rises a smooth, circular ring, surprisingly thin-walled, curving gracefully outwards
as it rises. But the ring doesnt remain circular: it breaks up into 24 pointed spikes. Why does it break up?
Why 24? These are good questions. The spikes are (almost) regularly placed. Why? Thats another good
question. The spikes come to a sharp point; most have just thrown off a tiny rounded droplet of milk (why?),
and the rest are about to. [...].
Focus your attention on the symmetry of the splash in dArcy Thompsons picture. It isnt perfect, but presumably thats due to slight imperfections in the shape of the original drop or the angle at which it fell.
Maybe it was wobbling a little, maybe the milk in the bowl wasnt completely still. But the dominant feature,
the spiky crown, doesnt look as though its caused by such imperfections. You get the feeling that a perfectly
spherical droplet would just give a perfect (and very probably also 24-pointed) crown!

Without going into detail, it turns out that with the right interpretation Curie was right all along,
but many of the consequences people draw from his principle are wrong, because they use the
wrong interpretation. According to Stewart and Golubitsky:
Curie was right in asserting that symmetric systems have symmetric states - but he failed to address their stability. If a symmetric state becomes unstable, the system will do something else - and that something else
need not be equally symmetric.
This is puzzling. A slightly rotated splash, with its spikes where once there were gaps, seems to be just as
valid an effect as the splash that actually occurs. Can the droplet have more than one effect ?
1. See [(156)], preface, p. xviii.

39

In the real world, no: something definite has to happen. You dont get two splashes at the same time. But in
mathematics, yes. Both splashes, the original and its rotation, are valid solutions to the same equations; valid
consequences of the same physical laws. Instead of a single effect, we have a whole set of possible effects: all
the different rotations of the 24-pointed crown. The logical fallacy is the assumption that each cause produces a unique effect. When the system becomes unstable, instead of a single effect, a certain cause may
have a whole set of possible effects.

This paradox - that symmetry can get lost between cause and effect is called symmetry breaking. In recent years scientists and mathematicians have begun to realize that it plays a major
role in the formation of patterns. From the smallest scales to the largest, many of natures patterns are a result of broken symmetry. According to Stewart and Golubitsky: 1
History is littered with examples where scientists and philosophers have misapplied Curies principle, seeking large-scale asymmetries in causes, to account for large-scale asymmetries - such as patterns - in effects.
For example, until very recently astronomers thought that the spiral arms of galaxies were caused by magnetic fields. Now theyre beginning to think that the spirals are the result of gravitational symmetry-breaking.
But Curies principle doesnt say that the size of the asymmetry is comparable in the cause and the effect. In
fact, when systems have symmetry, there is a good chance that the symmetry may break. When it does, very
tiny asymmetries play a crucial role in selecting the actual outcome from a range of potential outcomes.2
The interaction of symmetry with dynamics is itself a rapid growth area of research: it may not be as well
known as chaos, but in some respects its probably more useful. Humanity has always been better at exploiting patterns than it has chaos; though perhaps better at generating chaos than order. It may seem that there is
an unbridgeable gulf between symmetry and chaos; but one of the most exiting prospects for future discoveries lies in their interaction. In the dynamic behaviour of systems with symmetry mathematicians have stumbled upon a natural meeting-place for order and chaos.
7.3.1

The Mathemagic of Wallpaper Patterns

This part is concerned with the mathematical structure of wallpaper patterns. Surely you have
at some occation studied the pattern of some wallpaper and thought about the different ways
that the pattern can be shifted (= translated), rotated and reflected in such a way as to be transformed into itself. The set of all such transformation (= isometries) constitute the so called symmetries of the corresponding pattern. Togther these transformations - that leave the pattern as a
whole unchanged (= invariant) form a mathematical structure called a group, and therefore one
usually talks about the symmetry group of the pattern.
The mathematics of wallpaper patterns are not part of any standard mathematics curriculae, neither at the level of secondary school, high school or university. What follows is a summary of a
speech on this subject that I have given on several occations.3 Part of this material has been
used by a school class of 10 year old children within the context of the First Class Mathematics
project discussed below. It has turned out to appeal to both the boys and the girls in the class and especially to the latter - since it brings out the mathematics of pattern-making - such as e.g.
stiching, knitting, etc - which are traditionally female types of activities. In my mind
1. [(156)], p. 17.
2. Loc. Sit., preface, p. xviii.
3. Vsters, March 18, 1995 (the Swedish Association of Mathematicians), Sundsvall, January 26, 1996 (the
9:th Mathematics Biennal), Stockholm, January 25, 1997 (Matematics Biennette 97). As if by some form of synchronicity, the world famous mathematician John Horton Conway turned up in Stockholm about 6 months after my presentation in Vsters and gave an unforgettable lecture on the symmetries of the wallpaper pattern - where he discussed
them in terms of the so called orbifold notation (due to Bill Thurston).

40

Opinion 11:

The reason that girls seem to display less interest in mathematics than boys
has to do with the fact that the school system does not intellectually acknowledge the traditionally female forms of pattern-mathematics. This highly intricate and stimulating form of mathematics is only given tactile and practical
acknowledgement in the form of e.g. sewing, knitting and weaving courses.

The geometric structure inherent in various forms of patterns has asserted a strong fascination
on the human mind across different times and cultures. A multitude of art and craft - that has
been preserved through the ages - bears strong witness to this fact. However, it took to the end
of the last century until the underlying mathematical structures in the various forms of patterns
could be made precise and find explicit expression in terms of their so called symmetry. The
mathematical concept of symmetry was, in turn, a logical consequence of the concept of group
- which is one of the most important structures of modern mathematics, and which evolved into
its general (abstract) form during the last century. What follows is a brief overview of how to
classify wallpaper patterns with the help of these concepts.
The general abstract definition of a group can be formulated thus:
Definition 12:

A group is a set with an associative binary composition, where there is a

unit element and where every element is invertible.

This definition is extremely compact, and requires an understanding of the concepts of set,
associative binary composition, unit element and invertible in order to become meaningful. To
be more specific, I will exemplify with the type of mathematical group that will concern us
below - namely the group of all motions. Two motions can be combined (= composed) with
each other) by being carried out in succession (one following the other), and the resulting combination is always another motion. This phenomenon of creating one motion by combining two
others is referred to as binary composition.
If three motions - called a, b, and c - are carried out in succession, their resulting motion is
independent of whether we first combine a with b, and then combine the result with c - or
whether we instead combine a with the combination of b and c. Such a binary composition is
called associative. Moreover, there exists a type of motion that does not affect (= change) any
other motion through the means of composition, namely the motion of rest (= standing still).
This zero-motion functions as the unit motion of the group. Finally, to each motion m there is
a uniquely associated inverse (= neutralizer) motion (often called m -1), which neutralizes the
effects of m by moving everything back to where it came from, so that the combined effect of
the two motions is the zero-motion of identical rest.
Consider an ordinary wallpaper pattern. It has the (idealized) properties of being located in a
single plane as well as being indefinitely repeatable along the directions of this plane. It is
always possible to select certain parts of the pattern and then form the rest by translating (=
sliding) the selected part along such directions. If we carry out these translations (= parallel
shifts) on the entire (= infinitely repeated) pattern, it is easy to see that this pattern - taken as a
whole - will remain unchanged (= invariant). The pattern is transformed into itself - as a
mathematician would express the matter.

41

Apart from such sliding motions (= translations) there are often other types of motions whose
effects are not noticeable on the pattern as a whole, namely rotations (with certain angles
around certain points) and reflections (in certain lines). Of course, a reflection is not an actual
motion (since it reverses parity), but if we expand the concept of motion to include each type of
transformation that does not change the distance between any pair of points, then we can regard
reflection as a generalized type of motion that is called an isometry. The actual motions are
referred to as direct isometries, and they form a subgroup of the group of all isometries. Reflections belong to the so called reversing isometries. They do not form a group under composition,
since the composition (= product) of two reversing isometries is direct. In fact, the combined
effect of two successive reflections is either a translation or a rotation - depending on whether
the two reflecting lines (= mirrors) are parallel or not.
I will now introduce a mathematical definition of the concept of symmetry. Within the use of
everyday language, the word symmetry means roughly regularity or sameness in some
way. Within mathematics, however, one associates the word symmetry with the concept of
group by introducing the idea of a symmetry-group (= group of symmetries). This idea is based
on the following
Fact 3:

For any given wallpaper pattern, the set of its non-changing isometries
(= the set of isometries that leave it invariant) form a group.

Hence the following definition makes mathematical sense:

Definition 13:

The group of isometries that leave a certain pattern invariant is called the
symmetry-group of the pattern.

The fundamental idea - which has elevated the study of symmetric patterns into a mathematical
discipline - is to classify the various patterns with respect to their different symmetry-groups.
Definition 14:

Two patterns belong to the same symmetric family

if their respective symmetry-groups are isomorphic.1

In order to describe the structure of the symmetry-group of a wallpaper pattern, one can make
use of some basic facts from plane geometry, which are listed below for convenience The
proofs are simple, but are not given here.
Fact 4:

A planar isometry is uniquely determined by its image of 3 non-collinear points,

i.e. by how it maps 3 points that are not all located on the same line.

Fact 5:

Every planar isometry can be expressed

as a combination of at most 3 reflections.

Fact 6:

The combination of 2 reflections is a translation if the two lines are parallel,

and a rotation if the two lines intersect each other.

1. i.e. if they have the same structure (as groups).

42

Fact 7:

The combination of 3 reflections

is a reflection if the 3 lines are parallel or if they intersect in a common point,
and a glide-reflection otherwise.

From these facts one can draw the following conclusion:

Fact 8:

Each planar isometry is either

a translation, a rotation, a reflection, or a glide-reflection.

We will see below how each symmetry-group is characterized by its special mixture of these
participating isometrical building-blocks. We begin by studying the structure of the participating rotations. Consider a rotation r that is a member of the symmetry-group of a certain wallpaper pattern. The rotation r is always carried out around some point P in the pattern, and P is
referred to as the center (of rotation) for r.
Definition 15:

If a certain rotation r in the symmetry-group of a wallpaper pattern

turns the plane through an angle of 360/n degrees,
the centre of rotation of r is said to possess n-fold rotational symmetry
with respect to the given pattern.

Moreover, there is the following important:

Fact 9:

Each centre of rotation for a wallpaper pattern

possesses either 2-, 3-, 4-, or 6-fold rotational symmetry .

Proof:

We start by selecting two centers of rotation P and Q - located at a minimal distance

from each other - and investigate what happens when they are subjected to a rotation
of the patterns symmetry-group. It is easy to show that every other type of rotational
symmetry than the ones listed above must turn P and Q into two new centers of rotation that are even closer together that P and Q . But this amounts to a contradiction,
since we have chosen P and Q to be two minimally distant centers of rotation to start
with.
<<>>

Hence, the only types of rotations that can be part of the symmetry-group of a wallpaper pattern
are those that rotate the plane by 180, 120, 90, or 60. This fact forms the basis for the partition of the wallpaper pattern symmetry-groups that is shown in Figure Y. Each column contains
patterns with the same kind of maximal rotational symmetry, i.e. with the same minimal angle
of rotation. In order to get on with the classification we can make use of Sylvesters theorem:
Fact 10:

For a given wallpaper pattern, consider three neigboring centers of rotation P, Q,

R - with p-, q-, respectively r-fold rotational symmetry, where at least two of p,
q, r are greater than 2. Then it follows that
1/p + 1/q + 1/r = 1.

Proof:

The proof is based on the fact that the combination of two rotations is another rotation.
Let a/2, b/2, c/2 denote the size of the angles of the triangle PQR, and let Pa, Qb, Rc
denote rotations through the angles a, b, c around the points P, Q, R respectively. It follows that the combined motion PaQbRc must be identical to a rotation around some
point through the angle a+b+c = 360 , i.e. PaQbRc = the zero-motion of rest. Now,

43

since the point P has a p-fold rotational symmetry, and since PQR is minimal, it follows that a = 360/p, and by analogous reasoning we get b = 360/q and c = 360/r .
Since a+b+c = 360, we have established that 1/p + 1/q + 1/r = 1.
<<>>
Sylvesters theorem implies a strong limitation on the number of possible wallpaper symmetrygroups. If a pattern has rotations with more than 2-fold centers of symmetry, these must correspond to an integral solution p, q, r to the above equation 1/p + 1/q + 1/r = 1. However, it is
easy to see that there are only 3 different possibilities, namely (i): 1/4+1/4+1/2, (ii): 1/3+1/3+1/
3 och (iii): 1/6+1/3+1/2. These solutions correspond to the three rightmost columns in Figure
(16). The two columns to thet left correspond to (iv): no rotations and (v): only rotations with 2fold symmetry.
These five different cases can now be further analyzed with respect to the possible presense of
reflections and glide-reflections. This analysis is rather tedious and is omitted here for lack of
space. It leads to the conclusion that there exist a total of 17 different possibilities - which we
formulate as
Fact 11:

There are exactly 17 different types of symmetry-groups for wallpapers.

The reader is referred to [(49)] for a complete proof. The 17 different possibilities are all illustrated in Figure Y, while Figure (17) shows a classical flow-chart, by which one can easily identify the type of symmetry-group of any given wallpaper pattern.
The first proof of the fact that there are exactly 17 different symmetry-groups for wallpaper patterns was given by the Russian mathematician Fedorov in 1891 - curiously enough a few
months after he had proved the corresponding theorem in 3-dimensional space. In order to get a
compact formulation of this theorem, it is practical to make the following
Definition 16:

A crystal is a pattern which repeats itself endlessly

along the three different dimensions of space.

In three dimensions, Fedorovs theorem can now be formulated thus:

Fact 12:

There are exactly 230 different symmetry-groups for crystals

The proof of this fact is substantially more complicated than the corresponding proof in the planar case of wallpapers. A complete proof is given e.g. in [(150)]. It is important to point out that
all of the 17 different wallpaper symmetry-groups were discovered empirically a long time ago
- and have been used by the artists and craftsmen of many cultures. In fact, they are all represented in the (islamic) ornamental art at the Moorish palace of Alhambra in Granada, Spain1. In
his book Symmetry, the great mathematician Hermann Weyl writes the following words:
One can hardly overestimate the depth of geometric imagination and inventiveness reflected in these patterns.
Their construction is far from being mathematically trivial. The art of ornament contains in implicit form the
oldest piece of higher mathematics known to us.2

1. See e.g. Curiosidades Matematicas de la Alhambra: http://alhambra.dif.um.es/Alhambra/Curiosidad.html#GruposC.

2. [(169)], p. 103.

44

Fig. 16. The seventeen different symmetry groups of wallpaper patterns

45

Fig. 17. Flow diagram to determine the symmetry group of a given wallpaper pattern.

46

Tiling

Rational
yes

Non-Rational
no

tile by translation?

Periodic

Non-Periodic
hexagon

An infinity of shapes
tile only periodically

square

Rosette

triangle

Band
Wallpaper

Question:

Crystal

Are there sets of tiles

having two or more different shapes
that tile ONLY non-periodically ?

7
4D-Crystal
17
230

An infinity of other shapes

tile both periodically
and non-periodically

Penrose:
4783

1973
Found a set of six tiles
that force non-periodicity

1974
He reduced
them to two

Number of Symmetry Groups

National Bureau of Standards:
THEORY OF
QUASI CRYSTALS

1984

Found an aluminum-manganese alloy

that scattered a beam of electrons
into a pattern with 5-fold symmetry

Fig. 18. Crystals versus Quasi-Crystals: Periodic versus non-periodic tilings.

47

Computer Supported Mathematics Education

8.1

The Computer as a Universal Mimicking Machine

In this paragraph I discuss a few general aspects of the computer and introduce some terminology that expands on the familiar concept of virtual reality. Then I define the concept of an exiting exit from a program and discuss its central role within the GOK project.
Fact 13:

The computer can do virtually anything.

By this I mean that any kind of activity can (in principle) be simulated by computer. The computer could in this respect be likened to a universal mimicking machine.
Definition 17:

Virtual Reality is a well-known aspect of computer-space. For the real,

uncomputerized world I will reserve the term Real Reality.

Since a computer can realize (=implement) virtually anything, I also make the following
Definition 18:

The term Real Virtuality will refer to any type of project that is realized by
computer. Virtual Virtuality will denote a computer project that is specified
but not yet implemented.

In these terms, the GOK - just like any other software design project - is concerned with the
transformation from virtual to real virtuality. However, it is an important design goal of the
GOK to help its users to connect with real reality in various ways. Using the computer as a tool
in order to find out something that is so interesting that you want to turn off the computer and
start exploring the discoveries within their own media. This could mean anything from following a program link into the world of books - which is more profoundly explored off-line - to
coming across some raytraced images of reflections in the program, and being shown where to
find the corresponding mirrors, which are more directly explored by looking for yourself in real
reality.
In fact, one of the main aims of the GOK is to aid the user in finding various forms of such exiting exits, that imply leaving the computer to explore reality in other ways [Figure (19)].
Definition 19:

An exiting exit is a transformation from real virtuality (=computer) space

into some kind of real experience space (= reality) which is interesting
enough for the experiencer to forget what (s)he was doing for a significant
amount of time, in order to pursue the reality of the new experience on its
own. The virtually exiting exits are those, whose activities are still
goverened by the computer, whereas the really exiting exits are the ones that
involve forgetting about the computer altogether, in order to explore the
newly discovered structure within its own medium.

48

Reality

Virtuality
Exiting Exit
realized?

computerized?
yes
Virtual

no

yes

Real

Real
Really Exiting Exit

Computer
Simulated
Reality

Computer
Free
Reality

no
Virtual
Software Design

Implemented
Computer
Project

Specified
Computer
Project

Virtuality
Fig. 19. Exiting and Really Exiting Exits from Real Virtuality

To emphasize what I mean by a really exiting exit, I return to the earlier example from optics.
Due to the technological advancements of the plastics industry, there exist such things as highquality flexible mirrors. Playing with such a mirror, flexing it in front of your eyes while looking through it, creates a world of strangely curved magical images. A really exiting exit would
be e.g. to come across some examples of such images in the program - together with a link to
where the corresponding mirrors can be found - and then become interested enough to go there,
pick up some plastic mirrors and start flexing and looking for yourself.
As another example, consider the handling of clay in a sculpting process. This would be virtually exiting if the computer told you how to proceed, and what materials to touch or not, but
really exiting if you were free to explore the materials on your own, with no hampering restrictions.
8.2

The Educational Mathematics Programming Projects

As I mentioned above, for the last decade I have been involved with various software engineering projects within the field of mathematics education. I have suggested projects, as the term
goes, by specifying ideas for mathematical software tools that would be nice to have around
and resonable to implement. Below I have given a short list of these projects with some rudimentary descriptions. Most of these programs are still around, but some - notably MapCon ,
Drawboard and MacDrawboard - are history, and run only on extinct machines or under outdated operating systems.
8.2.1

MapCon

Mapcon is an interactive tool for studying conformal mappings.. The program allowed the
drawing of a curve in one window, and its immediate mapping into another window according
to a specified formula of type w = f(z). The program was written in Interlisp and ran on a
Xerox-1108 machine, which is retired by now. A more detailed description is given in

49

Carlsson, C. & Gustafsson, J. & Heimdal, M. & Lantz, J. & Lundeborg, M. & Mattsson S., MapCon , ett System fr Laborativ Matematik - ett projekt utfrt frPMI-kursen av D-teknologer i rskurs 3 under ledning av
Ambjrn Naeve p NADA & Matematik, KTH, 1986.
8.2.2

MapAnalyze

MapAnalyze is a similar type of tool designed to display the effects of both linear- and non-linear types of mathematical transformations to various forms of geometrical objects. It was written in Scheme for the Macintosh. More details are given in
Ekman, T. & Kuna, R. & ngqvist, T. & Scocco, W. & Sandbom, J & Vivas, J. L., Mapanalyze - ett projekt
utfrt fr IPM-kursen av matematikerlinjens rskurs 3 under ledning av Ambjrn Naeve p NADA &
Matematik, KTH, 1989.
8.2.3

MacWallpaper

MacWallpaper is a program for the interactive study of wallpaper symmetries, i.e repetitive
patterns of the wallpaper type. This is the program that formed the basis for the experimental
part of the GOK symmetry project. I have used it a lot in my daughters class as a mathematical
stimulant, ever since she started out in first class in 1991. For me this was the natural beginning of my First Class Mathematics project. More about that below. The MacWallpaper program is documented in
Engstrm, A. & Koistinen, J. & Avatari, A. & Persson, K. & Grape, P. & Ottosson, A. & Andersson, . &
Andersson, A., MacTapet - anvndarhandledning, projektarbete inom kursen Interaktiva System fr Matematikerlinjens datalogigren, Stockholms Universitet. Projektledning och matematiskt grundarbete: Ambjrn
Naeve, NADA & Matematik, KTH, 1988.
8.2.4

Drawboard - Projektiv Geometry in Practice

Drawboard was an early version - in the Xerox Interlisp environment - of the program
MacDrawboard, which was developed for the Macintosh a year later. A brief description is
given in connection with MacDrawboard in the next paragraph. More details can be found in:
Drawboard - Projektiv Geometri i Praktiken, projektuppgift av elever vid Matematikerlinjens datalogigren,
Stockholms Universitet under ledning av Ambjrn Naeve p NADA & Matematik, KTH, 1987.
8.2.5

MacDrawboard - an Application for Applied Projective Geometry

The two programs -Drawboard and MacDrawboard - were both designed for the interactive
study of plane projective geometry, which is the 2-dimensional geometry of points and lines
and their various incidense-relations. They made it possible to experience (= interactively
experiment with) some of the classical gems of geometry - like e.g. the famous theorems of
Pappus. and Pascal. This greatly increases the feel for what is going on. We can see directly
what is happening in the theorem, without having to verbalize (= linguistically denote) each
logical detail of the corresponding geometric configuration. The documentation of MacDrawboard is given in:
Andersson, N. & Berg, M. & Danielson, M. & Gyllensporre, D. & Johnson. C. & Jrvklo, . & Levitte, T. &
Paltzer, D., MacDrawboard - en applikation fr tillmpad projektiv geometri, projektuppgift fr D-teknologer i PMI-kursen DB330 under ledning av Ambjrn Naeve p NADA & Matematik, KTH, 1988.

50

8.2.6

MacFlow - a Graphical Programming Environment

MacFlow is a graphical programming environment designed mainly for educational purposes.

Its main purpose is to convey a feel for what an algoritm actually is, thereby contributing
towards an increased understanding of what a computer actually does. Within the program,
the user creates flow-charts with interconnected operators and variables. The interconnections
are either of type data-flow or control-flow. The program supports the user in his efforts to conceptualize an algoritmic process, by visually representing both types of flow in the same diagram. This is a powerful mix which creates a totality of presence of a computational process.
The algorithms can then be run in their entirety, like an ordinary program - or executed step by
step under the control of the user. In the latter case, the current contents of the internal variables
(intermediate data stores) as well as the corresponding state of control is clearly indicated and
updated on the screen, which helps the student to obtain a mental picture of the gestalt of an
algorithmic process. More details can be found in:
Bng, A. & Hulthn, M. & Lindberger, P. & Nedlich, K. & Persson, J. & Sundberg, J. & Svensson, C., MacFlow - a graphical programming environment, PMI-project assignment in course DB330. Idea and Supervision: Johan Appelgren & Ambjrn Naeve, NADA / Matematik, KTH, 1989.
8.2.7

PrimeTime

PrimeTime is a program that capitalizes on the gaming-frenzy of our times and makes use of it
in order to practice the basic arithmetical algorithms. The idea is to protect yourself when you
are being bombarded with pairs of numbers. These numbers can be neutralized by launching a
missile containing their sum if you are playing in addition mode, their product if you are playing in multiplication mode, etc. The program is described more fully in:
Carlsson, P & Hartikainen, M. & Jrgensen, J., PrimeTime - en anvndarhandledning fr Macintosh, projektarbete inom kursen Interaktiva System fr Matematikerlinjens datalogigren, Stockholms Universitet. Projektledning och matematisk grundid: Ambjrn Naeve, NADA & Matematik, KTH, 1992.

8.3

The First Class Mathematics project at the St.Erik Catholic School

In 1991 my daughter Ylva started in first class at the Sankt Eriks Catholic School in Stockholm. Due to the kindness and interest of her successive teachers (Anette & Kristina), I have
been allowed to work with the children and talk mathematics with them for about an hour a
week (and sometimes two). For the last six years, this has been my ongoing First Class Mathematics project. It has given me the opportunity to test some of my pedagogical fantasies in
real so to speak, and it has strengthened my conviction that mathematics can be taught and
learned in a first class fashion from the start and all the way up through the educational system.
This is not the place to present the details of the mathematical smorgasbord that I have presented to Ylvas classmates over these 6 years. It has included subjects such as

51

summing the first 99 integers (1+2+3+ ... +97+98+99)

figuring out how many different necklaces that could be made from 4 different beads
figuring out in how many ways the class could line up in a row and appreciating the size of 25!
playing with the faculty concept (by projecting Mathematica onto the overhead screen)

building the Platonic solids, and exploring their duality in connection with Eulers formula
exploring patterns by the help of MacWallpaper
cutting up Moebius strips in various proportions, trying to figure out in advance what happens
figuring out when a graph can be drawn without lifting the pen (leading to Euler graphs)
doing arithmetic in different bases (how would we have counted if we had had 1 finger on each hand?)
separating between the number and the figure (= its representation in a certain base),

figuring out how many molecules of air that fit into an empty milk-brick ( Avogadros number = 6.02x1023),
variables as boxes and solving equations as finding out whats in the box (showing how Mathematica does it)

In fact, I have found that many of the subjects that I have worked with are presented in an excellent little book called Matte med Mening (= Meaningful Mathematics) by Kristin Dahl 1, which
I was not aware of at the time. Kristin presents a wealth of interesting material that can be presented to children at an early age in order to provoke and stimulate their interest and curiosity in
mathematics. Its a shame that such a great book should too expensive to buy in class as one
of Ylvas teachers so adequately put it.
Anyway, working with these kids has been great fun, and it has strengthened my conviction that
the subject of mathematics can - and should - be presented to children in a much more constructive and thought-provoking way. Since the GOK project is heavily concerned with patterns, I
will give a brief discussion of the pattern part of the project.
8.3.1

Working with MacWallpaper

This was the main activity during the first two years of the project. Using two Mac-II and a
Powerbook 170, I assisted the children in working out their own patterns. Using an LCD-type
of Overhead-screen projector, we were then able to project their different images up in front of
everybody and hence to discuss them together.
The children were first encouraged to draw anything they wanted in the editor, and then play
with the 17 different pattern-possibilities in which their basic image could be turned into a
wallpaper. After modifying the drawing and choosing their favourite type of symmetry, the
children were given paper printouts of the corresponding pattern and encouraged to expand on
it further - by adding the dimensions of colour.
We also used an LCD-screen to project the patterns in front of everybody and discuss them
together. In this way we analyzed their symmetry, and the children could practice how to discover the more subtle forms of symmetry - such as e.g. glide reflections. But at the same time
we also discussed the holistic gestalt of the patterns, i.e. the impression that they made on us
as images. The idea was to convey an experience of the double-brained activity of mathematics
- as described in Chapter (7.1). It was an amazing experience to feel the exitement of the children when they were confronted with these concepts. The discussions just did not seem to end.

1. See [(27)].

52

8.3.2

Some General Observations

Of course, my smorgasbord of mathematics didnt manage to turn the oiltanker of learning by

repetition. The reasons have to do with the general attitude towards early mathematics education, as presented in the discussion of Chapter (6.4). In other words:
Opinion 12:

The fear of experimenting with new concepts in mathematics education is

related to the algorithmic fundamentalism that still dominates the pedagogical thinking within this field.

Calculating with X is hard.

I never understood it
when I was at school.
isA
Defence

Parent

Attitude

Teacher

isA
Children, we will now
start to calculate
with this mysterious thing X
that you have all heard about.
Expectation

Child

isA
Shit, Im never going to
understand this stuff!
Conceptual Difficulty
isA
Slightest sign of mental resistance
Confirmation
isA
Yeah, just as I figured,
I simply cant understand this stuff.
time
Fig. 20. The X-anxiety pattern.

The problem is not the learners but the teachers. To put it bluntly, the children dont know that
they dont know mathematics, but the teachers and the parents do. And this attitude is very
infectious: As an example, consider the following typical conversation - depicted in Figure

53

(20): The parent: Calculating with x is hard. I never understood it when I was at school. The
teacher (later): Now we are going to start calculating with that mysterious letter x that you
have all heard about. The learner reacts with something like: Oh, shit, Im never going to
understand this stuff. The learner (later - at the slightest sign of conceptual difficulties): Yeah,
just as I thought, I simply cant understand this stuff.
8.3.3

A Variable as a Box with a Name and (maybe) a Content

learnertime
isA

R+

a2

)2

R+

Arrow

isA
Function

Y = X2

Y
1

isA

Graphical Box Relation

X2
X
1

Y = X2

isA

isA

X2

XX

isA

isA
X

Box Relation

Box Exponentiation

Box Multiplication

Box

leads to
X - fixation

Fig. 21. Building variable abstractions: Traditional approach versus Box-calculus.

54

Teaching the children how to compute with x should be handled in quite a different manner.
from the way presented in Figure (20). I have used the analogy between a variable and a box as
a starting point. Both have name and maybe a content - if we have put something inside the box
- or equivalently - given some value to the variable. In this metaphor, an equation is a relationship between the contents of different boxes, and solving equations is equivalent to finding out
whats in the box.
This way of thinking about variables is very concrete and easy to conceptualize for children.
Moreover, it corresponds to how the program Mathematica treats a variable. If you type in
the name of the variable, Mathematica responds with its value (= content) - if there has been
something assigned to it (= put in the box). Otherwise Mathematica responds with the name
itself. By demonstrating this behaviour, and explaining it in terms of computations with
boxes, I managed to communicate the idea of what a variable is to each one of the 25 kids in
my daughters class - at a time when they were about 10 year old.
Figure (21) shows some ways to think about variables and functions - two crucial concepts in
gaining entrance to the higher levels of mathematics. The left part of this figure depicts different
levels of abstraction encountered, and the right part shows these concepts mapped into the box
analogy.

55

The Garden Of Knowledge - The Evolutionary Process

An important part of the Garden of Knowledge project is to document the interdisciplinary

cooperative process. This is a notoriously difficult task - with which we have all struggled in
various ways within the project group. In my capacity as initiator and overall architect of the
Garden of Knowledge, I have had the role of formulating the basic conceptual structure, and in
my capacity of mathematical gardner I have had the role of supplier of content (= knowledge
source). It is from this perspective that I will try to describe the evolutionary process of the Garden of Knowledge project - as I have experienced it.
9.1

The Initial DIL Project

The DIL-project is concerned with Design of Interactive Learning tools - with computer support. My first contact with the project occurred in November 1995, when Yngve Sundblad
invited me to a meeting (13/11) at The Royal College of Music (KMH). There I met Kenneth
Olusson and Bjarne Nyqvist from KMH, Bosse Westerlund from Konstfack, Peter Becker from
KTH and Jorge de Sousa Pires from Apple. We had a gengeral discussion on the nature of the
project, and I introduced myself and talked a bit about my background and interests within
this field - such as the pattern generating program MacWallpaper and my educational project in
First Class Mathematics. Then Kenneth and Bjarne presented a few of the multi-media based
projects that were going on at KMH, and - as an external source of inspiration - we had a look
at a CD-rom produced by Laurie Anderson.
At this time, the discussion that was going on within the DIL project was centered around the
possibilities of using Jorges hypercard-based Electronics Handbook 1 as a starting point to test
and develop different multi-medial forms of pedagogical reinforcements. I remember Jorge
talking enthusiastically about the great possibilities of such thinking tools - which was the
term he used repeatedly. At our next meeting (in December) we chose an entry from the Electronics Handbook at random. It happend to be modem, and - as a form of home assignment
until next time - we decided to think about various multi-medially supported descriptions of the
concept of modem.
9.2

The Lecture

During the winter and spring of 1996, we eventually arrived at the conclusion that we should
try to create a project in mathematics and one in music. At a meeting at the Royal Institute of
Technology (KTH) in May 96 (15/5) I proposed that we should consider the possibilities to fuse
these two projects into one - centered around illuminating the connections between mathematics and music. I was asked to motivate this further by giving a 2-hour lecture on the connections
between the two subjects - as well as their historical evolution.
The lecture was given at the end of May (29/5). It started from the great Greek dawn at Ionia,
with the birth of the rational project about 600 BC, featuring such great actors as Thales,
Anaximander and Anaximenes, and later a mystical rationalist named Pythagoras of Samos.

1. See [(35)].

56

What is the basic stuff that the universe is made of? - asked Thales - with the underlying
assumption that the world can be understood from basic principles. This new belief in the reasoning power of the human brain was an electrifying spark that set the Greeks aside from earlier cultures. Soon everybody was reducing the world to basic building blocks - for Thales it
was water, for Anaximander it was air, and for Anaximenes it was pneuma (the cosmic breath).
The novely lay maybe not so much in the answers, as in the fact that the questions were being
asked - not to the gods, like they had always been asked before - but to dumb nature itself.
As a counterpart of these substance-oriented philosophers, Pythagoras claimed that the true
nature of things are hidden in their relations - which gives them their form - and this nature can
best be explored through the concept of number (= figure). This raised the philosophical battle
between the substance-theorists (all is matter) and the relation-theorists (all is form) that has
been going ever since - until it recently ( 1925) ended in a quantum-mechanical draw
expressed in the disturbing dual nature of light. The photon is neither particle nor wave, but
sometimes the one, sometimes the other - depending on how we carry out the corresponding
experiment. I devoted time to describe the unity (= holism) in the early quest for knowledge and
discussed the Pythagorean form of interdisciplinary studies which involves connections
between such diverse areas as astronomy, geometry, arithmetic, music, medicine and religion.
[Figure (24)]. Within the field of music, I explained the fundamental discovery of Pythagoras
concerning the connection between musical harmonies and the simplest rational numbers - such
as the doubling (2/1) of the octave, the 3/2 of the quint, the 4/3 of the quart, etc. I also touched
on the esoteric interpretation of the nature of numbers - such as the male number 3 and the
female number 4 that unite in their common life-fruit 5(representing the child) - through the
mediation of the so called Pythagorean theorem (32+42=52).
I also followed a few threads of development forward in time, and described e.g. how the geometry of the Pythagorean quint-circle (3/2)n created the prerequisites for the syntheziser, built on
the uniform quint, which was achieved in the eighteenth century (during the days of Bach) by
introducing the irrational compromise 2 1/12 for the frequency raise of a half tone step. I continued the story of the synthesizer and described how to play tunes with constant chords by making use of the so called Fourier Transform to calculate the pressure on each individual tangent.
This gives an instructive analogy to the material syntheziser used by quantum mechanics
itself - where such wave-interference chords are played on the Fourier transform based tangents of the Shrdinger equation [Figure (22)] - in order to create matter in the form of wavepackets. I exemplified with the so called Heisenbergs uncertainty relation - which describes the
limits for the simultaneous accuracy that can be attained in measuring e.g. the position and the
velocity of a particle (like an electron). With the Fourier transform, I showed how this amounts
to the fact that waves of all frequencies have to cooperate in order to synthesize an infinitely
sharp peak, i.e. a particle. In this context, the idea of the synthesizer as a form of time-machine
- with possibilities to travel all the way from the sixth century BC of Pythagoras to the twentieth century of quantum mechanics.
I have a vivid memory of this lecture, since it is the only ony that I have so far held on this subject - the early evolution of western knowledge with an emphasis on the areas of mathematics
and music. I also found the time to talk a bit about my educational project with First Class
Mathematics [see chapter (7)], where I have experimented with trying to convey some carefully
selected mathematical insights to the pupils of my daughter Ylvas class. As I have described
above, this project is based on viewing mathematical truths as a sort of logically tested fantasies

57

- where the right brain is fantasizing and the left brain does the logical testing. Only the fantasies that survive the logical tests are elevated to the status of mathematical truths. To encourage
such a view of mathematics it is vital that the children are confronted with interesting structures at an early age - structures that can encourage them to foster their own mathematical fantasies. An example of such rich and interesting structures is provided by symmetrical patterns,
such as rosettes, bands, and wallpapers. In the lecture, I showed examples of the experimental
exploration of some wallpaper-patterns that was carried out in this spirit by a group of 9-year
olds - using the program MacWallpaper - within the First Class Mathematics project. It felt like
I managed to convey some of the mathemagical power of the structural exploration work of the
kids!
Indeed, it was a very special lecture. Five of the six persons present were Rikard, Katarina,
Klara, Kristina and Mattias - who all later became co-workers in the GOK-project in various
ways. I interpret this as a sign that I managed to infect them with a substantial part of my enthusiasm for this holistically inspired knowledge project.
In the Figures (22) - (24) below, I have collected some of the patterns that I used in discussing
these ideas.

Digital
Worldview

Total
Commensurability

Operator

Eigenvalues

Real

Linear

Pythagoras
Philosophy

Harmony(1, 4/3, 3/2)

Harmony of
the Spheres

Rational
Music

Newtonian
Mechanics

Fourier
Analysis

Quantum
Mechanics

Heisenbergs
Uncertainty Principle

Matrix

Hermitian
Symmetric

Fig. 22. The evolution of the harmony concept - from Pythagoras to Quantum Mechanics

58

Fig. 23. Overview of Pythagorean Philosophy

59

How to play a given tune

with a constant chord
on a trigonometric synthesizer

Fourier
Analysis

Fourier
Synthesis

Unique reconstruction theorem:

If the function f(t) L1(t),
and f(n) = 0 for all n, then it follows that f 0

Fourier
Decomposition

The Sounds of Silence:

Decomposer

Composer

The only tune that can be played

by the zero chord
is total silence

analyze

press key number n

with strength f(n)

THE CONSTANT CHORD

Fourier
Composition

synthesize

PRODUCES THE WAVEFORM

Fourier
Series

Discrete
Synthesizer

Periodic L1
Functions

Fourier
Transform

Continous
Synthesizer

Non-periodic L1
Functions

Analyzer

press the key at position

with strength f()

Synthesizer

Basis

Fourier
Legendre
Laguerre
Hermite
Wavelets

Trig.
Legendre
Laguerre
Hermite
Wavelets

Fig. 24. Playing a tune with a constant chord.

f ( n ) = ( 2 ) m

f ( t )e
T

f (t) =

int

dt

(1)

f ( n )e

int

(2)

Zm

60

 f ( t )e

f ( ) = ( 2 ) m

f ( t ) = ( 2 )

dt

(3)

(4)

f ( )e
R

it

it

The synthesizer has a change-basis-functions- type of menu with choice values like Trig, Legendre, Laguerre, Hermite, Wavelets, ....
Coordinates of the vector x in the basis B:
x = [ x ] B = [ x 1,
, x n ] { b1, , bn }

(5)

The vector x synthezised back from its coordinates as a sum:

n

x = ( x ) B =

x b
i

i=1

(6)

Harmony

Crystal

Atomic

Arithmetic

Musical
Pythagoras:

Pattern

Sub

Substance

Bohrs electron model:

orbit
speed (km/s)
1
2160
2
1080
3
720
1920
4
540

Hay (Law of Rational Indices):

The lattice spacings of atoms
permit certain peculiar
crystal symmetries
1786
and no other

Lavoisier:
Hydrogen
Oxygen
Nitrogen
H2O
1780

-600
octave
quint
quart
ters
2 3 4 5
--- --- --- --1 2 3 4

Dalton:

1807

Every chemical combination

takes place only in its particular
and precise weight proportions

Harmonic Mean:
a=b+b/h
b=c+c/h
eliminate h =>
(a-b)/(b-c) = a/c
law of
octaves

Fedorov:
1891
There are exactly
17 wallpaper symmetry groups
230 crystal symmetry groups

Mendelejev:

1869
Prediction of
3 new elements
(eka-aluminium)

Fig. 25. The evolution of pythagorean harmony.

61

Periodical System
of the Elements

9.3

The Concept

Out of this lecture, the concept of a garden of knowledge was born. Katarina was the one that
introduced the metaphor of the garden. She imagined the garden of knowledge as a kind of
computer game - where one would start out in an old and neglected garden and try to restore it
to its past glory of knowledge and wisdom - with the help of the all-wise mystic and mathematician Pythagoras.
I have had many different working names for this kind of project before. Mathematical Planetarium, Information-Art-Show, Brain-Train and Knowledge-Smogasbord - to name a few. But
the concept of a garden of knowledge gave the metaphors a number of new and exiting dimensions. The teacher as a gardener, i.e. as a cultivator and a pruner of the knowledge which is
gradually evolving out of the ever more complicated mosaik of information - this metaphor was
coherent with the idea of the teacher as an exformator - i.e. the teacher as a support for the
focusing on the relevant structure and the disregarding (= weeding out) of all the rest of the
information.1
In short, a garden of knowledge seemed to be the natural environment in which to serve up an
interesting smorgasbord of knowledge, adapted to the inevitable change - away from duty-oriented and towards interest-oriented learning - that is beginning to permeate the educational systems of today. To individualize the educational process by adapting the various corriculae to the
individual - instead of the other way around - is a practiced both within academia as well as
within commercial education (in the form of tailored courses for employees).
9.4

The Big Think

The concept of a garden for handling knowledge is a very powerful idea-virus. It had a strong
impact on my thinking - especially since it connected remarkably well with several of my old
favourite ideas, as for example the concept of post-intellectualism. I have often argued that the
so called post-industrial society is better described as being auto-industrial but post-intellectual. In the historic year of 1968, the Swedish State Bank instigated the so called Nobel
prize of economics2 - thereby elevating the practice of economics into the noble status of science. To me, this act symbolizes our definitive transition into the present post-intellectual state.
The trend of mathematics education that I have witnessed [see Figure (2)] - more and more of
know-how and less and less of know-why - is a natural consequence of this paradigm shift.
It now occurred to me that a Garden of Knowledge would be the natural step forward - into the
compost-intellectual information society. Just as any garden, this one would contain an intellectual compost - in order to break down outmoded thoughts and concepts and encourage their
organic recombination in the form of new ideas.

1. In his book Mrk Vrlden [(120)], Tor Nrretranders describes this process as creating exformation. Such exforma-

tion procedures form the basis of all types of learning, and are necessary in order to transform information into
knowledge.
2. Riksbankspriset till minne av Alfred Nobel (The State Bank prize in honour of Alfred Nobel), to be awarded together with
the real Nobel prizes.

62

:Since it is one of the aims of the GOK-program to support the concept-formation process and
render it more visible in various ways, it became natural for me to refer to this program as a
compost-intellectual philosophy s(t)imulator. The attempts to model the theorizing process in
itself are based on an epistemology of science that has been put forward by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, who is one of the deep thinkers of the twentieth century. In his bookThe Entropy
Law and the Economic Process he gives the following description of theoretical science: 1
Theoretical science is a living organism precisely because it emerged from an amorphous structure - the taxonomic science - just as life emerged from inert matter. Further, as life did not appear everywhere there was
matter, so theoretical science did not grow wherever taxonomic science existed: its genesis was a historical
accident. The analogy extends still further. Recalling that science is what scientists do, we can regard theoretical science as a purposive mechanism that reproduces, grows and preserves itself. It reproduces itself
because any forgotten proposition can be rediscovered by ratiocination from the logical foundation. It
grows because from the same foundation new propositions are continously derived, many of which are found
factually true. It also preserves its essence because when destructive contradiction invades its body a series of
factors is automatically set in motion to get rid of the intruder.
To sum up: Anatomically, theoretical science is logically ordered knowledge. A mere catalog of facts, as we
say nowadays, is no more science than the materials in a lumber yard are a house. Physiologically, it is a continous secretion of experimental suggestions which are tested and organically integrated into the sciences
anatomy. In other words, theoretical science continously creates new facts from old facts, but its growths is
organic, not accretionary. Its anabolism is an extremely complex process which at times may even alter the
anatomic structure. We call this process explanation even when we cry out science does not explain anything. Teleologically, theoretical science is an organism in search of new knowledge.
Some claim that the purpose of science is prediction. This is the practical mans viewpoint even when it is
endorsed by such scholars as Benetto Croce or Frank Knight. Neo-Machians go even further. Just as Mach
focused his attention on economy of thought without regard for the special role of logical order, they claim
that practical success is all that counts; understanding is irrelevant. No doubt, if science had no utility for the
practical man, who acts on the basis of predictions, scientists would now be playing their little game only in
private clubs, like the chess enthusiasts. However, even though prediction is the touchstone of scientific
knowledge - in practice man must prove the truth, as Marx said - the purpose of science in general is not
prediction, but knowledge for its own sake. Beginning with Pythagoras school, science ceased to serve
exclusively the needs of business and has remained always ahead of these. The practical man may find it hard
to imagine that what animates science is a delight of the analytical habit and idle curiosity; hence, he might
never realize what is the source of his greatest fortune. The only thing that exites a true scholar is the delight
in adding a few bars to an unfinished symphony or, if he happens to believe in the ontological order of nature,
in uncovering another articulation of that order. His interest in a problem vanishes completely the very
moment he has solved it.
Others say that science is experimenting. As far as theoretical science at least is concerned, this view confuses the whole organism with one of its physiological functions. Those who commit this error usually proclaim that Bacon is sciences John the Baptist. Naturally, they also blame Aristotles philosophy of
knowledge with its emphasis on Logic for the marasmus of science until Francis Bacons time. Facts have
never been more ignored. To begin with, Aristotle never denied the importance of experience; one eloquent
quotation will suffice: If at any future time new facts are ascertained, then credence must be given rather to
observation than to theories and to theories only if what they affirm agrees with the observed facts2. In relation to the time in which he lived he was one of the greatest experimenters and keenest observers. As Darwin
judged, Linneaus and Cuvier are mere schoolboys to old Aristotle. His teachings should not be blamed for
what Scholasticism did with them. Finally, mechanics was already moving fast on Aristotelian theoretical
tracks at the time Bacons works appeared. Without the analytical habit which had been kept alive by
Euclids Elements and Aristotles writings, Kepler, Galileo and Newton, as well as all the great men of sci1. [(57)], p.36.
2. Aristotle, De Generatione Animalium, 760b 30-33.

63

ence that came later, would have had to join the Sino-Indians in contemplative and casual observation of
nature. To the extent to which we may turn history around in thought, we may reason that without the peculiar love the Greeks had for Understanding, our knowledge would not by far have reached its present level;
nor would modern civilization be what it is today. For better or for worse, we have not yet discovered one
single problem of Understanding that the Greek philosophers did not formulate.

Roundabout this time I happened to think of the book Tankar frn Roten 1 by Tage Danielsson and combined with traditional UNIX jargon this led to the idea of the root-priviledges of the
gardener. Another fertile analogy was the comparison to the biblical approach. Here we find a
Tree of Knowledge growing in Paradise, which could be described as the Garden of Innocence
( ignorance). It now occurred to me that we were dealing with a dual type of situation - a
Garden of Knowledge, which by reasons of symmetry ought to contain a Tree of Ignorance.
In my mind, this tree became associated with a state of randomness, where thoughts would be
generated at random by making use of different types of verbal one-armed bandits, which I
had been wanting to construct for a long time. When you pull the lever - instead of a variety of
fruits - you would get a well formed sentence with the individual words selected at random out
of suitable word-class repositories of nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, preposition, etc. etc.
Moreover, in the contrast between the stochastic and the deterministic state lies the tension
between the irrational dice magic on the one hand, and a world model based on cause and
effect - which forms the basis for the entire rational ( deterministic) scientific project - on the
other. Here lies the conceptual basis for a description of the statistical ( stochastical) way of
thinking that has been applied with such enormous success in modern times - within such
diverse fields as e.g. quantum mechanics and financial mathematics.
Yet another strength of the GOK metaphor was that it could naturally accomodate the allegory
of knowledge that is being transmuted into understanding. If the brain succeeds in the process
of constructing a cocoon out of its mental reflections, then each catepillar of knowledge is
given a chance to develop its own eventual wings of understanding. The analogy between the
seeker of understanding and the catepillar that spins itself into its own cocoon - based on an
inner conviction ( instinct) of a necessary qualitative change - emphasizes the role of the
teacher in assisting the students to nurture, focus and reflect on their evolving patterns of information ( knowledge).
To sum up, in the metaphor of a garden of knowledge I felt there was a strong conceptual environment for future development work, since this metaphor naturally represents the two-step
process of weeding and reflecting which is necessary in order to transform information via
knowledge into understanding.

Information

weeding

Knowledge

reflecting

Understanding

Fig. 26. The exformation process as a two-step transformation of weeding and reflecting.

1. Thoughts from the Root

64

9.5

The Pythagorean Mutiny

By the middle of June (12/6) there was an important meeting at Apple in Kista. Bjarne, Bosse,
Peter Becker, Jorge, Rikard, Katarina, Klara, Kristina were present. Yngve and Kenneth were
prevented to obtain. Within the DIL-project group we had been discussing different possibilities
- broadening the horizon of possibilities all the time - but now we had come to the point of having to take some hard decisions as to what we were really going to put our efforts into. The students and designers were enthusiastic about the possibility of being able to work within the
GOK-project as I have outlined it above.
Following a rather long introduction by Jorge, I presented our idea of project Garden Of
Knowledge (GOK) - supported by my overview-map of Pythagorean philosophy and the birth
of the rational project [Figure (23)]. I mentioned Katarinas idea of the garden restoration game,
and discussed the GOK concept as a way to illuminate the relations between phenomena and
concepts in general. In my presentation I tried to paint the same kind of holistic perspective on
knowledge that hade managed to captivate the students a few weeks earlier.
My talk lasted for about 15 minutes, and afterwards I had the feeling that it came across as a bit
too short and disconnected. It was clear that the project was encountering strong opposition
from the part of Apple, i.e. Jorge. It must not turn into some kind of multi-medial playground
- was one of his comments. The most positive reaction I got from Peter Becker, who was the
only one that expressed his undivided support for the history-of-ideas approach to the subject.
The rest of the DIL group kept a rather low profile and had no really explicit opinions as to the
relative merits of the proposed approach.
After the meeting the students were competely desillusioned. Its not going to happen- they
didnt like the idea was the general reaction. I had to devote a lot of energy into convincing
them that it wasnt as bad as it looked. I think theyre going to let us have a go at it, you just
wait and see - was my optimistic attitude.
And indeed. In a meeting with Yngve a few days later, we cleared up some misunderstandings
and got an OK to go on working with our concept of the Pythagorean garden of knowledge. En
emerging project group was formed, where Kenneth Olausson and I would function as ideagenerators together with a group of students and graphical designers (Katarina, Rikard, Klara,
Kristina)
I would propose an overall conceptual structure for the garden, and Kenneth and I would propose various forms of content from the fields of music respectively mathematics. Later I was
given the title of overall garden architect, and Kenneth and I were appointed musical and
mathematical gardeners - responsible for the content of the corresponding knowledge patch.

65

The rest of the group would function as a sort of interest-filter. Whatever seemed to be interesting and intelligible enough would be developed further. Moreover, each member of the team
would have their own independent functions. Klara and Kristina were to work with the graphical design - as estetical gardners, and Rikard - as a programming gardener - would take on
the coding of the prototype sketch that we planned to put together with the use of Director. J
remember that Rikard - rather reluctantly - let himself be persuaded into this by Yngve, since he
did not think that he had enough programming experience to take on a project of this kind.
According to Yngve, however, Director was no match to learn - and he referred to all the successful programming projects that had been carried out in this environment as a part of various
forms of esthetic multi-media education at GI and Konstfack.
Katarina, who was very enthusiastic about the project as a whole - but found it more difficult to
envisage her own role within it - was finally persuaded to act as the coording gardener of the
GOK-project.
It was further decided that we were to work during the summer, and towards the middle of September we would evaluate the project, and decide if - and in that case how - to proceed. I
remember expressing some anxiety concerning the possibility of working together during the
summer, but we arrived at the conclusion that it would work out if everybody gave the project
some reflective thought from their own respective angle of things - and then we would calibrate our thoughts later.
9.6

The Consolidation

During the rest of June I devoted myself intensely to applying the garden metaphor to the educational process as a whole - thinking about how the corresponding concept-formation system
ought to be structured.
The environment of the garden gave a natural background for the presentation of various elements and phenomena , as well as a possibility to supply a variety of different tools to experiment with these. From the start I imagined the elements divided into two classes - depending on
whether they belonged to heaven or earth. Among the heavenly elements were of course the
sun, the moon, the stars and the planets, and among the heavenly phenomena e.g. appearance, motion and disappearance of light. Among the earthly elements were air, water, solid
(soil), fire and vacuum, and among the earthly phenomena were light, sound, heat, electricity
and magnetism [Figure (27)].
In the garden I also envisaged a number of experimental tools, i.e. different types of computer
programs, to support the interactive exploration of various elements and phenomena. There
would e.g. be a Lyre and a Drum for performing musical experiments, and a set of Canonballs
to build pythagorean pyramide-figures. There would also be a set ofTiles - to represent the
exploration of gemetrical patterns in general. As a basis for this activity we already had the program MacWallpaper [see paragraph (8.2.3)]. As presented in Figure (27) the lyre was associated with the analogue part of the music (= its tone), while the drum represented the digital part
(= its beat). The lyre would be connected to the pythagorean monochord, and futher - through
time travel - to the Bach piano, and the modern synthesizer. The drum would work as an
entrance to the rythm-laboratory - where one could experiment with building various types of

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rythm instruments, e.g. with the help of the so called Chinese remainder theorem - which is of
fundamental importance within the field of fast computing (= modular arithmetic)1.
Towards the end of June I had a meeting with Kenneth (27/6), where I presented him with these
concepts. Since he had not been present at the Apple meeting, this was the first time that I had
the opportunity to introduce him to the concept of a pythagorean garden of knowledge.

BaseConcepts

Question/Response Log
Element

Citations

Sun

Moon

Root Thoughts
Star

Network Links

...

Planet

Heaven
Phenomenon

Element

Extinction

Air

Water

Solid

Fire

...

Motion

Re-illumination

Vacuum

...

Earth
Phenomenon

Light

Sound

Basic Configuration

Heat
Exoteric

Environment
Substance

Form

Changes

yes

no

Invariant

no

yes

Canonballs

Elektricity

Magnetism

Esoteric

Tiles

...

Randomized

Lyre

Drum

Pattern

Atom

Space

Time

paradigm-shift
Band
Substance

Form

Changes

no

yes

Invariant

yes

no

Wallpaper

Analogue

Digital

Tone

Beat

Crystal
Music

Fig. 27. Heavenly and earthly elements and phenomena (97-06-27)

Kenneth was instantly positive and very responsive to these ideas. He proposed that we should
make use of a (brick) wall in stread of a drum - partly because it harmonized better with the
1. Se t.ex. Biggs, Discrete Mathematics, .....

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concept of a neglected garden, and partly because we could extend it into a type of rythm tool
that made use of bricks of different length in order to represent different time intervals. I liked
this idea a lot, and we discussed many types of mathematical connections, as e.g. the representation of various number sequences by the corresponding rythmical processes.
It was a very constructive meeting. For the first time I felt some real enthusiasm for my
thoughts about the GOK from somewhere else than the part of the students. We definitely had
an interesting set of connections between mathematics and music to explore!
9.7

The Emergency Hack (Pythagoras of Crotona)

In July 96, I went to California for a month. I continued thinking about the structure of the
GOK - as well as to gather more information. During the summer I realized that there should be
a third mode of operation (= state) in the garden - apart from the rational and the random namely the esoteric ( spiritual) mode [Figure (27)]. In this way the program would incorporate the fundamental difference between the material ( exoteric) and the spiritual ( esoteric)
way to look at the world - thereby contributing towards bridging the devastating gap between
science and humaniora. [Compare Figure (7)].
As a humanist it is just as confining to try to conserve your ignorance of technological and
scientific matters, as it is for an scientist or an engineer to try to ignore philosophy and history of ideas. The important point is that there should be room enough in the GOK in order to
allow the new generation of students to develop their own world-views in a non-biased way.
Back from California, I persued the esoteric trail. Manly P. Halls classical work [(64)] was my
main source of reference. I collected text material and classified articles according to their relations to the elements and phenomena - as pictured in Figure (27). I consulted Koestler [(89)],
Murchie [(104)], Heath [(68)] and several other gardeners - well versed in the history of ideas.
I concentrated on three basic types of questions that could be asked about any combination of
elements and phenomena - in exoteric as well as in esoteric mode. The basic, overview-question was the following: What is its material/spiritual nature?. This fundamental question was
then complemented with three different aspect-questions - namely, What does it consist of?,
How does it behave? and Why does it behave this way?. I spent quite some time with the
question of the nature of light - which is one of the most subtle questions that physics can ask.
I wrote condensed descriptions with various basic configurations: light as particles, light as
waves, light as photons ans light as colours. I also formulated the corresponding types of questions and responses within the fields of heat, energy and work. The aim of this activity was
partly to lillustrate the nature of physics, but first of all to show by example how a collection of
scientific insights might be organized in order to provoke student interest. In this activity, I
started from the content and made use of the traditional text-medium - well aware of the fact
that the multi-medial dimensions would be added later. I wanted to have a rather large collection of informational raw-material to work with later, when we were going construct a first prototype.
Within the project group, we pretty much followed our own trails of thought during the summer. When we met up again in early August, we had some problems in coordinating these trails.

68

I envisaged a working prototype within a month (= middle of September) - a prototype that

would have to include some kind of interactive structure on top of a carefully selected set of
interesting facts - in accordance with the ideas discussed above. In view of the earlier criticism
from the meeting at Apple, I felt that the informational contents that we were going to present
in this prototype would have to be interesting enough to convince the sponsors of CID - within
academia as well as industry - that the GOK project was something quite different from the
ordinary childish educational programs that seem to flood the market and contribute to giving
the entire concept of multi-medial education a bad name.
During the summer, our graphical designers - Klara and Kristina - had worked out several interesting suggestions for shapes and symbols that would appear in the GOK. At this time we were
looking for some kind of icon-language, a way to graphically represent the various elements
and phenomena, whose combinations we wanted to describe and explore.
As time went by and August passed into September, it became increasingly clear to me that we
were not going to have any prototype at all to show on evaluation-day, which was coming up
on September 12. A day and a half before demo deadline, Rikard and I started up an emergency hack. During a 30 hours marathon session, we implemented my text-based design,
which was built on top of a classical picture of Pythagoras in his garden of knowledge.1 In the
upper left corner, we had a yellow and and a red apple, that corresponded to the exoteric (=
material) respectively the esoteric (= spiritual) state of the program. There were also a whole
range of questions, comments and links concerning subjects such as music, patterns, geometry,
physics, astronomy, and philosophy. The questions were hardwired to certain elements and
phenomena and could not be asked freely and in relation to any selected combination of elements and phenomena. The answers, i.e. the thoughts from the root, as well as the links (=
citations from other gardeners) were mainly text-based with a few scanned images scattered
here and there.
Maybe I can best describe the flavour of this Pythagorean Prototype of the GOK, by translating an article by Titti Hasselrot, titled Play it again Pythagoras2, where she describes a demo of
the program which I gave her as CID on September 30, 1996.
9.8

Play it again Pythagoras

Ambjrn Naeve invites us into his garden of knowledge, which means starting up his computer and the
multi-medial learning environment that is emerging here at KTH in a close collaboration between engineers,
scientists, musicologists, graphich designers and artists. Several of the university colleges around Valhallavgen are involved in this interdisciplinary development process - including The Royal Institute of Technology,
The Royal University College of Music, Konstfack and the Dramatic Institute. Industrial interest includes
Apple as well as the Swedish Institute for Systems Development. The basic resources are provided by CID
(Center for User Oriented IT-Design), which is a recently formed competence center at KTH. The aim of the
Garden Of Knowledge project is to provide a wealth of material for people that are curious about all sorts of
ideas - with an emphasis on their cultural and historical development process. Not only engineering concepts such as the wheel, the printing press or the electric light bulb, but also more philosophical and esoteric
ideas, such as god, love, or music.

1. Pythagoras of Crotona, by Knapp [from The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P. Hall, (64)].
2. Notbladet, nr 11, 1996.

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9.8.1

The Esoteric Dimensions of Reality

The first appearance in the garden - i.e. on the screen - is the old greek mathemagician Pythagoras, one of
the founding fathers of science. Now you have to choose whether to click the yellow or the red apple up in
the left hand corner. Ambjrn Naeve - the basic architect behind the project - explains: If you click the yellow apple, the program transits to its material (= exoteric) state. Here you can browse through the historical
development of materialistic ideas - all the way from Pythagoras ( 600 BC) up to present times - and
study questions of an extrovert (material) nature. If you click the red apple, the program transits to the esoteric (= spiritual) state, where you can study more introvert types of questions.
Ambjrn Naeve is well aware of how provocative it can be to speak of esoteric matters within the scientific
community. The important thing is that the new generation of students will be allowed to build their own
world-views in a way that has not been biased from either the material or the spiritual side. In this respect the
Garden of Knowledge project can be seen as an attempt to breach the gulf betweeen science and
humaniora. It is just as limiting for a humanist to remain ignorant of scientific matters as it is for a scientist to disregard philosophy and the history of ideas.
9.8.2

The Musical Harmony of the Spheres

So, let us click the lyre - which leans against a wall in Pythagoras garden - because the lyre is the entrance to
the field of music. What did Pythagoras think about music - almost six hundred years before Christ? If we
take the exoteric route into the material we get into Pythagoras theory of harmony. He was the first to quantify the natural harmonies of two vibrating string, and he showed that the harmonious tones corresponded to
simple, integral ratios of the lengths of the strings. In this way Pythagoras established a profound connection
between mathematics and music. He was the first to mathematize music, says Ambjrn Naeve, who is himself a mathematician with a strong musical interest.
If, in stead, we enter the lyre through the red apple, we encounter a beautiful engraving of the harmonious
music of the spheres, which represents Pythagoras view of the world - and the interplay between its material
and spiritual forces.
The GOK program is far from finished. What will we see if we click the red or the yellow apple in the future?
What will we see that has to do with music in our own age? Is it really still possible - in this day and age of
specialization - to envisage the connections between the philosophical or humanistic perspective on the one
hand, and the scientific or engineering perspective on the other? Yes, says Ambjrn Naeve, let me give
you an example. On the one hand, we have in our days the art form of so called minimalistic music . On the
other hand, within science and mathematics we find many patterns of regularity being expressed with the
help of computers. The relationship between minimalistic music and the theory of patterns is just as profoud
as the relationship between Pythagoras theory of harmony and his philosophical world-view. Its just a matter of seeing it.
Being a geometer, Ambjrn Naeve takes a leap sideways and clicks into the field of Patterns. He demonstrates the 17 different repetitive principles that exist for constructing wallpapers in the mathematical sense.
For example, take a wallpaper with this repetitive effect. Add instructions concerning the instruments, the
tempo and the volume that you want for the music. Then you can try out what this wallpaper sounds like!
9.8.3

Transforming Knowledge into Understanding

We want to cultivate knowledge so that it is transformed into understanding. This means that we support a
change of the traditional teaching role, away from tenured preacher and knowledge-filter towards the new
role gardener and knowledge-cultivator. Students with some amount of extra curiosity is the primary
target group for the Garden Of Knowledge program during the development work, says Ambjrn Naeve,
but we all hope that the program will eventually dissipate down to younger age groups. Through the GOK
program, the user should also have access to various databases - as well as to books and other learning tools.
Book publishers cannot go on keeping their secrets, he says, a book can no longer be treated like a pound
of butter!

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9.9

The Hyperbolic Symmetry of Eschers Angels and Devils

The demo took place on the inaguration day of the new CID localities - September 12, 1996.
The emergency hack was well received by the audience, and - in my opinion - contributed decicively towards a continuation of the GOK project. It was, however, put together in a way that
created tensions within the group. The graphical designers (Klara and Kristina) felt bad,
because their part of the work didnt show up in the prototype, but was documented separately on paper. This was unfortunate and affected the atmosphere within the group in a negative way
- something for which I must take full responsibility. Seen in retrospect, I should have predicted
this reaction, but I was simply too concentrated on producing a working prototype in time for
the demo - a prototype which must have at least some measure of both function and content - to
be aware of the negative energy that I was creating. Poor Rikard - whose heroic work had delivered the implementation just in time - was caught in a psychological cross-fire, which made
his work-situation considerably more difficult than it would have been otherwise.
Following the CID inauguration, it was decided that the project should be allowed to continue,
and - in a meeting with Yngve - the next phase was organized. Bosse Westerlund was enlisted
as project manager and esthetical gardener, which increased the esthetic competence within the
group. This was important - especially since Klara quit the project at this point. It was decided
that we would keep working during the fall, with a new demo in December - in order to evaluate the project and decide about further continuation.
During the fall Kenneth was taken ill, which grounded the music part of the project. Because of
this unfortunate turn of events, the second prototype - which was presented on December 16
1996, did not contain any new musical material.
The critique that was voiced against the first prototype was basically founded on the embarrassing fact that the multi-medial content was blatantly missing. This fact - combined with the psychological tensions that had been created by the emergency hacking of the first prototype - led
to a restart in connection with the second phase of the GOK project during the fall of 96. Now
we were to prioritize the multi-medial components, in order to explore what they could offer in
terms of presentation support - in relation to the first, text-based prototype.
We decided within the group that the second prototype should be more linear than the first i.e. it would contain fewer possibilities for choice. In return for this restriction, it would - as a
form of compensation - contain much more of multi-medial support. This decision, which may
seem surprizing, was due to the inevitable programming difficulties that are connected with the
creation of multi-medial interactivity. In spite of Rikards great work, we were simply too
understaffed on the programming side to be able to overcome these difficulties within the timeframe of the project.
We therefore made use of two well-known principles of effective design - namely compromize
and reuse. I went through my old documentation videos, and came up with some material that I
had been involved with producing about 7 years ago - in cooperation with Gran Adolfsson at
UtbildningsRadion, Sveriges Telvision.1 From this material - as well as from some of my own
geometric animations from the old Symbolics days - I collected various pieces that had to do
with geometry, and Rikard helped me to digitalize the material and turn it into Quicktime format. This collection then became our basic film repository for the second prototype.

71

One day, in a meeting with Katarina, I drew up a use-case scenario on the white-board by our
usual group meeting place - the kitchen roundtable at CID. The presented material was chosen both for its interest, as well as for its usefulness to demonstrate various forms of multimedial support. Katarina took the whole thing down on paper, and our story-board became the
basis for the implementation. We concentrated on geometry - presenting subjects such as e.g.
Pythagorean numbers, crystalline structures and hyperbolic geometry. We used analogies from
optics to explain the idea of a geodesic curve, and showed a film (and a computer animated
sequence) to illustrate that the fastest route between two points is not always a straight line. We
analyzed Eschers famous woodcut Circle Limit IV (Angels and Devils) to show that it represents a kind of wallpaper symmetry that cannot exist in the (ordinary) euclidean plane - since it
contains both 3-fold and 4-fold centers of rotational symmetry.
The second prototype(the Angels & Devils) also contained sound.We had no sound recording
facilities at CID, but through the courtesy of Osqradion at KTH, we were given access to their
facilities. Magnus Skantz, Rikard Linde and myself were involved in this enterprise. Two days
before the demo, we brought a powerbook to the sound studio. Then I read the text to each film
as it ran, and Magnus taped it. Since the films were rather big (= took up a lot of disk space),
we had to copy them one by one across the net.
On demo-day (Dec. 16, 1996) the Angels & Devils prototype was well received. Many people
found the content interesting, although the degree of interactivity was not so high. Several people also commented on the differences between the first and the second prototype.
9.10

The Grand Epistemologic Scheme

After this demo it was decided that the GOK project would continue during the next year - at
least until the end of June 97. By that time the entire work-plan for CID would be up for
renewal anyway. Having produced one interactive, text-based prototype and then a (more or
less) non-interactive multi-medial prototype, we were now eager to come up with a prototype
that was both interactive and multi-medially supported.
Up til now, the monumental figure of the knowledge-gardener Pythagoras had dominated our
conception of what the garden would be like. As the idea of a more distributed form of of gardenership took hold within the group, I came up with the concept of a knowledge-patch1 to
adapt the garden to this idea. Each knowledge-patch would have its own gardener, who would
be subjectively responsible for the knowledge presented there. These patches would then be
linked together into some form of knowledge-patch-work2. From this patchwork I later developed the idea of a Knowledge Manifold - see Chapter (11) - by connecting up with some old
ideas about calibration by coherence related to the concepts of direct- and inverse limits from
Category Theory, which is a modern branch of mathematics [see Chapter (13)].

1. The series was called In the middle of Mathematics and it consisted of six 30-minute programs that illus-

trated different aspects of the subject. I was involved in making a program on non-euclidean geometry,
together with Lennart Carlesson and Torsten Ekedahl. Hans Wallin, Hans Riesel and Claes Lfwall were
involved with making other programs in the same series.
1. Kunskapstppa in Swedish. This concept is connected to the idea of being master of your own patch (= herre p tppan)
2. Kunskapens Kolonitrdgrd in Swedish.

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During the winter I made an attempt to formulate an overall epistemologic structure of the
GOK - an attempt that is presented in Chapter (11) below. In a CID-seminar of April 23, we
gave a presentation of our project, where I described the GOK program as a compost-intellectual philosophy-s(t)imulator. The meta-structural pattern behind this analogy is shown in Figure (30). The linguistically based concept formation (= concept geometry) of Chapter (11.2)
forms the basis for the epistemological classification of Figure (38) based on successive layers
of disregards. The topology of such multi-layered equality is presented in Chapter (12), and it
forms the basis for effective design of the knowledge-components of Figure (37).
9.11

The Compromise

Within the project-group it became gradually clear that the navigatonal aspects of concept
geometry presented too many problems to resolve within the 2-dimensional setting that we
were working in. We therefore reached a sort of compromise, based on an idea that Bosse had
picked up from a CD-rom presentation, and which allowed us to stay within the same presentation map, while browsing the contents on different levels. Together with the idea of a scrollable
plane that wrapped around both horizontally and vertically, this formed the basis for the third
prototype, the development of which is described in the group-report [(97)].

Fig. 28. The geometry map of the third GOK protptype.

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10

The Subjective Observer

10.1

The Mental Control Room

The most fundamental of all human assumptions is the concept of I. This assumption creates a
distinction between me - not me, inside - outside, subjective - objective. This is a fundamental distinction which penetrates us deep enough to shape the structure of experience
itself. In fact, it creates the basic framework that we use in order to explore and interpret reality.
The process of finding out whats happening starts on the day we are born - if not earlier - and
it goes on constantly throughout our lives. The external tools that are available to us in this
quest for understanding are our senses, and the corresponding internal tool is our brain.
We can picture the brain as a person living in a closed room inside ourselves. This room has no
windows and no doors, and the brain is forever shut up inside it. On one of the walls there are
five monitors, one for each of our senses. There is also a row of levers, which the brain can pull
in order to generate interaction with the outside.
The brain is constantly watching the monitors on the wall - studying the signals that they transmit, trying to figure out what goes on outside and how to interact with it. If we think of ourselves as space-ships - vehicles moving about in space - then the brain is the person in the
control room, controlling the ship by watching the sense-monitors and pulling the action-levers.
I prefer to think of the levers of action as the tangents of a large action-piano, upon which the
brain is able to play different tunes. Within this metaphor we could state
Fact 14:

Life is playing your action-piano in harmony with your sense-music.

Of course, what is meant by harmony (= coherence) is ultimately decided by the brain itself.
We will have more to say about these concepts below.
10.2

Birth - The Landing on a Strange Planet

On the day we are born, our space-ship is indeed landing on a very strange planet. Our previous
communication line, the umbilical chord, is completely cut off, and our sense-monitors are suddenly going bezerk - transmitting a lot of strange and unintelligible signals to the mental control
room. This sudden outburst of high-energy sensory bombardment creates pain, and the natural
reaction of the brain is to grab hold of the levers of action (play around on the action-tangents)
at random - in order to try to relieve it. In doing so, one of the first things that the brain discovers is that pulling the voice lever as hard as possible seems to generate the best possible form of
relief - by the interaction with some strange external phenomenon later to be referred to as
mother. In the beginning, the brain is able to stand this sensory monitored sound and light
show only for short intervals without blowing its tubes. Therefore, during the first few months
its main activities consist of shutting it out by sleeping and easing the pain of it by crying and
eating. The situation is very similar to that which was facing the first men on the moon, who
only dared to explore the external reality for a few hours each day, and spent the rest of the time
hiding inside the familiar reality of the space-ship. And yet, the strangeness of the moon as it
appears to an astronaut is small compared to the strangeness of the world as it must appear to a
new-born baby. No wonder then if babies cry a lot.

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10.3

The Internal Workshop

If you want to relate to yourself as a new-born baby, try to imagine yourself as being stuck
inside the control room of your own mental space-vehicle with all your sense-monitors going
bezerk on you, and with no mental conception of any outside at all. How would you go about
sorting out the chaos of sensory impulses? Looking for the structure you need to find out how to
manage your own controls; how to play your action piano in harmony with the sense-music that
appear on the monitors. The name of the game is adaptation (= survival), because it is literally a
matter of life and death.
To compose the necessary action-music for the adaptation game, each player makes use of his
or her inherent abilities. In the human brain these gifts of nature include such abilities as memory, pattern-recognition, abstraction, imagination and emotion. These abilities are by no means
independent or mutually exclusive of one another, and the division between them makes no
claim as to being exact or complete in any way: In fact, they often overlap one another and
work together in virtually inseparable ways. But they also possess a certain amount of individuality and inexpressibility in terms of combinations of the others, which merits a certain distinction between them.
We can think of these abilities of the brain as different kinds of materials and tools that are
present inside the control-room. Taken together they constitute the internal workshop where
the brain is working to produce its action-music.
Memory can be regarded as a cabinet file where the brain can keep things stored away, available
whenever it decides to bring them out again.
Pattern-recognition is basically the sensitivity of the brain to a variety of different forms and
structures. It can be likened to the tool bord of a carpenter with different shapes - like e.g. triangle, square and circle - hanging from the nails instead of hammer, saw and screw-driver.
The brain makes use of these shapes to identify patterns and make relevant groupings of the
incoming sense-data. It seems that some elementary shapes are present on the tool-board from
the very beginning, while the more sophisticated ones are added later, constructed by the brain
with the help of memory, imagination and abstraction in accordance with the observations that
it makes on the sense-monitors - just as a good carpenter constructs a new tool if the need for it
arises often enough.
It is important to realize that many of the shapes and structures hanging from the mental toolboard are not visual or geometrical in themselves. We can iconify them - and represent them
to us as geometrical shapes - but since they relate to the non-visual part of the sense-spectrum,
they must necessarily be of a non-visual nature.
Memory and pattern-recognition are abilities that we share with a lot of animals, but the ability
to abstract is probably a unique feature of the human brain. Abstraction is the mental ability to
recognize similarities in the behaviour of different groups of sense-data, and to shape these similarities into a concept of which the mind has no direct sensory experience, i.e. an abstract concept. Abstraction forms the basic foundation for human speech. Almost every type of verbal
communication is carried out in terms of abstract concepts. We speak comfortably of e.g. a
chair, and everybody understands what we mean by that word, but at the same time noone has

75

ever had any kind of direct sensory experience of it. What we actually have experienced is thousands of different physical objects (groups of sense-data) of various shape, size, texture and colour - but with the one thing in common that we could sit on them. By the use of abstraction the
brain recognizes the common behaviour-pattern of all these different phenomena and molds it
into an abstract entity - a chair. If our brains were not able to perform this function, we would
be forced to relate individually to everyone of the multitude of phenomena that constitute the
concrete raw-material for this un-experienced concept. This would undoubtedly place an
enormous strain on our memories, since they would have to keep all this sensory information
stored and available to us. We would literally have to remember each individual chair that we
had ever encountered, in order to be able to make use of it when it appeared on our sense-monitors again. It is as good indication of the usefulness of the concept of chair that it allows us
not only to deal with an already experienced chair without remembering its individual characteristics, but it also enables us to walk up to a totally new sense-phenomenon (a chair that we
never laid eyes on before) and make perfect use of it.
By performing the trick of abstraction the brain relieves its memory of a large amount of superflous information, thereby clearing a lot of memory-space which then can be put to better use.
The reason why it is possible for us humans to control and manipulate animals may well be that
they are too busy remembering things!
Within the setting of the internal workshop we can think of abstraction as a sort of disintegration spray, a very strong type of acid that the brain can apply to a group of phenomena in order
to dissolve their individual sensory appearance and lay bare the core of their common structure.
In short, abstraction is an excellent cleaning-fluid for the memory-cabinet.
The essence of imagination is opposite to that of abstraction - much as creation is opposite to
destruction. In the mental workshop we can imagine imagination as a tybe of creation gas
capable of creating any new kind of concept or tool that the brain can conceive of. Whenever it
wants a new concept to help sort things out a bit better, the brain turns on the creation-gas
which makes the wish come true. If the new tool is a good one - i.e. if it is helpful in composing better action-music - the brain will pin it on the tool-board. Otherwise the brain will get rid
of it and try to create a better one. /////// Anaximenes air (pneuma).
The most important function of imagination is to invent a cause for each effect that the brain
observes on the sense-monitors. The notion of cause and effect is such a basic creation of the
brain that it is difficult not to accept it as a fundamental truth. From the very beginning, the
brain develops its action-music by repeating the individual chords over and over again. Eventually, the brain cannot avoid observing that a certain action-chord always seems to correspond to
the same relevant sense-readings. Therefore it naturally assumes that the action-chord creates
the sense-readings, thus representing the action-chord as the cause and the corresponding
sense-readings as the effect.
Approaching the problem of classification of sense-data, it is natural for the brain to start with
the sense-readings that it can manipulate and reproduce internally. This leads to the establishing
of the framework of cause and effect, and by the time the brain is ready to deal with sensedata which it cannot control in this way, the established pattern of regarding sense-readings as
effects makes it natural for the brain to assume that they too must have a cause, something
must make them appear on the sense-monitors.

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To solve this problem, the brain makes use of imagination. It imagines the concept of an outside, an external reality beyond its own manipulative control, wherein it can imagine the causes
of these sense-readings to be located.
The concept of an external world (disregarding oneself) is such an enormously useful tool
for the classification of sense-data that very few people seem to seriously doubt its actual existence. But it is important to understand that the concept itself - whether adequate or not - is a
creation of the mind.
Emotion is the last of the mental workshop abilities on our list, and it is undoubtedly the most
subtle and complex one of them all. It is extremely difficult - if not impossible - to metaphorize because its basic structure does not lend itself to verbal dissection. We can think of
the faculty of emotion as being located in a separate part of the mental workshop - emotionspace - as opposed to the other abilities which are located in thought-space or rational
space.
We are instinctively aware that thinking and feeling are two structurally different ways of evaluating an experience - both of which are necessary aspects of understanding it. They are both
governed by their own internal logic, and they each take place in their respective part of the
workshop. The brain cannot cross the border-line between them without at the same time
changing its mode of operation from thinking to feeling or vice versa.
Whenever it wants to think about its feeling or communicate them verbally, the brain has to
work in thought-space (using thought-logic) in order to construct a thought-space-model of its
corresponding emotion-space-configuration. Since the basic texture of these two spaces are
very different, this problem presents us with enormous difficulties, and we spend a lot of our
time trying to figure out what we feel and why we feel it. The urge to analyze and communicate his feelings has been an integral part of the history of man, leading through the ages to the
evolution of such emotional disciplines as poetry and art.
10.4

The Evolutionary Dilemma of the Human Brain

Concerning the problems of communication between thought-space and emotion-space, Arthur

Koestler has ventured a very interesting and highly worrying analogy. He discusses the human
dilemma, the violence-based interaction methods (= military solutions) that seriously threaten
the long term survival of the human race, and traces its roots back to the quasi-schizofrenic
division between reason and emotion, between the rational intellect and the irrational and emotional belief-systems. [Janus, p.18]. Koestler refers the reader to MacLean1, who has summarized the functioning of the human brain in this highly illustrative way:
Man finds himself in the predicament of having been equiped by nature with basically three different brains,
that have to work together and communicate in spite of substantial structural differences. The first (and oldest) one is a basic reptile brain. The second one has been inherited from the lower mamals, and the third one
is part of a very late development, which has evolved into the specifically human part of the brain. Speaking
metaphorically about these three types of brains within the brain, we could imagine that when a psychiatrist
offers his patient to lie down on the coach, he offers him to stretch out on top of a horse and a crocodile.

1. MacLean, P. D., Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, vol 135, #4, Oct. 1962.

77

Corpus Callosum
Neo-Cortex
Left

Horse Brain

Right

Reptile Brain

Fig. 29. A schematic structure of the human brain.

According to Koestler, if we substitute the single patient for humanity at large, and the psychiatrists couch for the scene of history, we arrive at a grotesque but fairly accurate picture of the
human condition. During another lecture in neuro-physiology MacLean made use of the following metaphor1:
In the terminology of today, one could think of these tree brains as three biological computers, each one with
its own special form of subjectivity as well as its own intelligence, its own feeling for time and space, its own
memory, its own motorical system and so on.

Koestler goes on to describe the evolutionary history of the brain [(91), p.19)] in the following
way:
The reptile brain and the primitive mamal brain together form the so called limbic system, which we can
refer to as the old brain - as opposed to the neocortex, the specifically human thinking-cap. [...]
But while the antideluvian structures of the innermost parts of our brain - governing our instincts, passions
and biological desires - have hardly been affected at all by the forces of evolution, at the same time - during
the last half miljon years - the human neocortex has grown and developed at an explosive rate which lacks a
known counterpart in evolutionary history. In fact, the growth of the human neocortex has been so rapid that
some anatomists have compared it to a form of evolutionary tumour.

Koestler points out that biggest evolutionary mistakes were made in the development of different kinds of brains. Hence, the invertebrates developed their brain around their intestinal tract,
which ment that as the nerve-mass was developed and expanded, the intestinal tract would by
necessity become more and more compressed. In fact, this is what happened to spiders and
scorpions; their intestinal tract were strangled by their brain - an evolusionary design dilemma
which they managed to survive by becoming blood-suckers. Koestler refers to Gaskell, who
describes the situation thus2:
During the process that lead to the appearance of the vertebrates, the evolutionary design and development of
variations within the invertebrates (leddjuren) was leading up to a terrible dilemma, caused by the way the
brain was pierced by the intestinal tract - either the ability to digest the food without enough intelligence to
catch it, or enough intelligence for catching the food, but no ability to digest it.
1. MacLean, P. D., A Triune Concept of the Brain and Behaviour, Boag and Campbell (ed.) 1973.
2. Gaskell, The Origin of Vertebrates,

78

In the words of another eminent biologist, Wood Jones1:

This markes the end of the evolutionary brain development among the invertebrates. They commited a fatal
mistake when they started building the brain around the intestinal tract. Their efforts to develop a large brain
failed [...] A new attempt had to be made.

Koestler then goes on to say:

This attempt was made by the vertebrates. But a major branch of vertebrates, the Australian pungdjur were
also caught in an evolutionary form of cul-de-sac. In contrast to us moderkaksdjur the pungdjur carry
their undeveloped new-born in a pung. Their brain lacks an important component, corpus callosum, - a distinct nerv-area which connects the left and right hemisphere of the brain of us moderkaksdjur 2. The neuroscientists have recently discovered a basic division of labour between the left and right half of the brain,
which seem to functionally complement each other like Yin and Yang. Evidently, the two hemispheres must
cooperate in order for the mamal (or the human) to make full use of their capacity. Hence, the lack of a corpus callosum indicates an insufficient coordination between the two parts of the brain - an expression which
sounds ominously familiar. This could well be the main reason that the evolution of the pungdjur - in spite
of bringing forth many species that carry striking resemblances to their cousins among the true mammals came to a halt at the present level of the koala.

According to Koestler, the never ending catastrophies in the history of man are mainly due to
our grossly exaggerated ability to identify ourselves with some form of tribe, nation, church or
cause - and to accept its credo uncritically and enthusiastically, although these wholy truths
are in blatant contradiction to both our reason and our self-interests and even substantially deminish the chanses of our personal survival. In [(91), s. 23] he concludes:
Hence we are brought to the immodern conclusion that the problem with our species is not an excessive
amount of aggression, but an exaggerated ability of fanatical devotion. Already a quick glance at history
should convince us that the individual crimes that are committed for selfish reasons play a very subordinate
role in the grand human tragedy - compared to the masses that are butchered in unselfish loyalty towards a
tribe, nation, church or political ideology ad majorem gloriam dei. Except for a small minority of greedy or
sadistically inclinded individuals, no wars are fought for personal gain, but for the cause of loyalty and devotion to the king, the country or the cause. Murder for selfish reasons is the statistical exception in all cultures,
including our own. Murder for unselfish reasons, with a grave risk for ones own life, is the totally dominating form of historial expression. [...].
Mans most deadly weapon is his language. He is as susceptible to the verbal hypnotism of slogans as he is to
infectious diseases. And when such a verbal epidemic strikes, the group-soul takes over. It obeys its own
rules that are different from the behaviour protocols of each individual member. When a person identifies
with a group, it decreases his ability to reason and increases his passions through a kind of emotional resonance or positive feedback. The individual is no killer, but the group is, and by identifying with the group the
individual is transformed into a killer. This is the diabolic dialectic which is reflected in the human history
of wars, persecution and genocide. And the foremost catalyst in this metamorphosis is the hypnotic power of
words. Adolf Hitlers words were the most important destructive weapon in his time. And long before the
printing press was invented, the words that were spoken by Allahs chosen profet started an emotional chainreaction which shook the world from central Asia to the atlantic coast. Without words there would be no
poetry - and no wars. Our language constitutes the main strategic factor behind our feelings of superiority
towards our animal brothers, and - in view of its explosive emotional power - it poses a constant threat to our
survival.

1. Wood Jones, F. & Porteus, S. D., The Matrix of the Mind, Habit and Heritage, London 1943 (1920).
2. Mera exakt, de hgre (icke-olfaktoriska) funktionella omrdena.

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11

The Concept of a Knowledge Manifold

The urge to classify and structure knowledge is an intellectual force that has been felt by man
- and responded to in a multitude of ways - for at least 2500 years according to written record.
It flourished in the magical 6:th century BC, when men like Thales from Miletos and Pythagoras from Samos were shaping the foundations of the mathematically based, scientific way of
thinking about the world that dominates us today. The revolutionary new idea that swept the
Greeks at this time was the following: The world can be intellectually understood! It is not the
whimscal playground of unpredictable gods, but a reasonable structure - more like a kind of
mechanical machine - operating according to well defined and explicitely formulatable natural laws! This marks the beginning of the age of reason, the rational project, which lasted
for about 300 years - after which time it was put on ice and reawakened almost 2000 years
later by the intellectual curiosity of the renaissance.
11.1

Epistemological Framework

On of the most fundamental questions that anyone can ask is How do I know that what I think
I know is true? The study of this question is called epistemology. It is a complex subject, one to
which many philosophers and theologians have devoted their entire careers. The discussion
here will by necessity be brief and incomplete, but should suffice to demonstrate the critical
importance of the subject to software engineering in general, as well as to the conceptual structure of the GOK in particular.
The GOK is an example of an epistemological framework that I have termed a Knowledge
Manifold. In any type of Knowledge Manifold, the representable world is regarded as consisting of a number of objects(= entities) of type phenomenon (=percept), concept or tool.
Definition 20:

By a phenomenon, I mean a group of sense-perceptions that stand out, i.e.

that have a well defined boundary (= crisply defined interface) with respect
to the rest of the world as perceived by some observer.

A phenomenon represents groupings of the observers perceptions that are internally coherent,
i.e. that occur together in some strongly coupled way. Light, sound, heat and electricity constitute examples of physical phenomena.
The structure of a Knowledge Manifold is based on the following fundamental
Definition 21:

An idea (= concept) is a representation of an experience.

This represents a totally anti-Platonian definition of the concept of idea. Platos ideas are eternal and unchangable basic structures, while the ideas of a KM are subjectively based, and
originate in the individuals desire to represent his own experiences.

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Meta-theory

Meta-structure
Phenomenon

Consciousness

Concept
axioms

Structure

Conceptualization

Theory
theorems

Experience

falsification

true = not false

anticipation

Experiment

Expectation

undoable?
yes

Space

no

Time

Fig. 30. The Meta-structure of a Knowledge Manifold

Concepts are mental constructions whose purpose is to provide structure to the manifold of
phenomena that we experience, thereby making these phenomena as well as their mutual relations more graspable, manageable and describable to the human intellect. The concepts render
the phenomena speakable to us in the sense of Wittgenstein1. Some concepts are direct linguistic images of phenomena, as e.g. the concept of light - while other concepts are more abstract
and lack a direct coupling to a certain phenomena, as e.g. the concept of energy.
Concepts (= ideas) come in two basically different kinds, inward ideas are expressed mentally
and outward ideas are expressed medially. The mental concepts are private and can be used
only for personal speculation while the medial concepts are are communicable to others. The
medial ideas in turn occur in different forms, mainly text-, image-, sound- or motion-based.
Digital mixtures of such concepts are presented today under the familiar label of multi-media..
In a Knowledge Manifold, relations between phenomena and concepts are represented by various kinds of tools. Using an active tool, one can perform experiments of different kinds, while a
passive tool conveys information through different types of sensing media, most often visual
images, sound or text.
Your consciousness experiences phenomena, creates concepts and experiments with tools. The
phenomena are related directly to your experiences, the concepts are related to your efforts to
describe and interpret these experiences, and the tools are related to the experiments that you
perform with this purpose.

1. Tractatus Logico-Filosoficus [(174), p. ???]

81

Aquiring knowledge is to build good (= useful) descriptions of various kinds of phemomena

and their multitude of possible interactions. Such descriptions are often called explanations or
theories. In order to explain the intriguing interplay of phenomena, we form concepts in our
minds, concepts that we then combine and relate to each other deductively (by logical reasoning or theorizing). In physics, to take an example, the phenomenon of light can be described
theoretically by using concepts like time, energy, particle, wave or photon. The power of a
group of concepts lies in the usefulness of the theories that can be generated on top of them.
Each theory is based on a number of concepts that it cannot explain within itself. Such concepts
will be referred to as basic. Basic concepts are used within a theory as the building blocks for
an explanation of its other concepts. Hence, within the theory of physics, we cannot explain
concepts like force, mass, or energy - anymore than we can explain the concepts of point, line
or plane within the theory of geometry. Descriptions such as two points determine one line
and two lines determine one point do not tell us anything about the nature of a point or a line
in itself. Here we encounter a clear-cut example of what could be termed the Wittgenstein
unspeakability principle. we formulate this as a
Fact 15:

The basic concepts 1of a theory mark its boundary towards the unspeakable.
Only the relations between its basic concepts are expressible within its formal
language.

Poincar has formulated the same idea in the following words:

The aim of science is not things themselves - as the dogmatists in their simplicity imagine - but the relations
between things. Outside those relations there is no reality knowable2.

Theoretical descriptions (expressions) are usually divided into two separate classes: axioms and
theorems. Both axioms and theorems are speakable (expressable) within the theory, but only
theorems are provable (deducable) within it. The axioms of a theory represent its assumptions
and the theorems of the theory represent its most important deductions3. To be provable within
a theory means to be deducible from its axioms and its already established theorems, applying
nothing but the theorys own logic, i.e. its own rules of deduction4 (= deductive inference).
The mind works part deductively, by theorizing - part inductively, by collecting experiences. A
theory creates expectations that often lead to experiments, the outcome of which in turn can
verify or contradict the corresponding theoretical predictions, thereby influencing the conceptual evolution of the theory itself. In this way the concepts of theory and experiment ( deduction and induction) form together a dynamic pair of counterparts, a conceptual duality similar
to the classical yin-yang pair of ancient Chinese philosophy.

1. Within the theory, we can talk with them (= using them), but not about them.
2. [(128)], p. xxiv.
3. A deduction of a minor nature is often referred to as a lemma, if it forms part of the resoning steps leading up to a theorem,
or a corollary if it appears as a natural consequence of some theorem(s).
4. An example of a deduction-rule within the theory of aristotelian logic is given by the familiar modus ponens.

82

perceive
Concept

Percept
conceive

Fig. 31. The Yin-Yang duality of the Perception-Conception cycle.

Referring back to the philosophical simulator pattern of Figure (30), experimental testing of
intellectually conceived and formulated theories represents the scientific way of relating phenomena and concepts. According to Popper, we build up theoretical (deductive) expectations
and collect experimental (inductive) experiences by trying to falsify our theories as best we can.
In fact, the experimental results are based on measurements where the concept of equality is
defined in terms of non-detectable difference1. An experiment is a falsification-machine for
theoretical expectations - Popper could have stated the matter. Whatever does not surrender to
falsification eventually aquires the status of scientifically established fact, or law of nature.
In fact these theoretical truths, these natural laws, are not like universally established laws in
the sense of totally immutable truths. In fact, they are more like intellectual tools, a sort of
mental wrenches and screwdrivers with limited power and range of application. The laws of
nature provide us with thought-recipies for cooking up theoretical expectations regarding a lot
of different physical configurations.
11.2

Concept Geometry - Linguistically Based Concept Formation

In his famous Erlanger program of 1872, the great geometer Felix Klein proposed to define a
geometry as a collection of statements concerning objects that remain invariant under a group
of transformations. This marks the beginning of the modern viewpoint - where each geometry
is regarded as a sort of language, with its own collections of transformations (= verbs) and
invariants (= nouns).
Our linguistic structures (languages) are intimately related to our methods of concept formation. The verbs describe the operations (changes) that we can observe - or imagine - while the
nouns describe the invariants, i.e. the substances that survive the operations (transformations)
of the verbs. The adjectives describe values of aspects on the nouns, like in the phrase the red
car stopped where the adjective red represents a value of the aspect colour, which can be
associated with the noun car
This situation carries strong similarities to geometry. A geometric theory behaves like a language: It has its own verbs, that express the types of motions that the geometry admits, and its
nouns that express its invariants, i.e. the concepts that survive the motion-transformations of the
verbs. To give an example, the concept of square is a noun of euclidean geometry, because the
transformations of this geometry consist of ordinary (rigid) motions, reflections and uniform
1. Compare the discussion of Chapter (12).

83

scalings, and each of these types of operations transforms a square into a square - leaves the
squareness invariant, as a mathematician would put it. Square is thus a euclidean geometric
concept, because it survives the action of the euclidean verbs. However, in the world of geometric shadows, projective geometry, the concept of square is not a valid noun. Projective geometry considers all shadows equivalent, and its verbs (motions) are represented by combinations
of shadow-projections. Projective geometry therefore has no room for squares, since the
shadow of a square - cast from a point outside of its plane onto another plane - is not in general
a square, unless the planes happen to be parallel in space. Hence a square does not survive the
(=all) actions of the projective verbs, and square is therefore not a projective noun (= invariant)1. This is illustrated in Figure (38), which describes the multi-layered structure of geometry, regarded as a so called knowledge-component [see Chapter (11.6)].
11.3

Concept Classification

The basic epistemological structure of a knowledge manifold is shown in Figure (32). The concepts are divided into containers and elements. A container-concept consists of a number of
concepts and tools. It has an associated map. An element-concept is classified as an operation,
a substance or an aspect, in accordance with the concept geometry - as described above.
Response

Fact

gen
spec
Concept

Tool

part
whole

assoc

Phenomenon
Answer

Active

Mental

Question

application

Medial

Passive

Comment

Image
Direct

Indirect

Sound
Element

Container

Text

Operation
Map
Substance
Aspect
Fig. 32. Conceptual classification of a Knowledge Manifold

1. Since a projective transformation can take any four (generically placed) points into any other four-tuple of

such points [see e.g. (22)], a square can have no special structure in projective geometry - apart from its
planarity and its 4-edge-ness. Hence, in projective geometry, the word square means just a general quadrangle (or quadrilateral).

84

An operation-concept corresponds to a verb, and describes a process of change (transformation). A substance-conscept corresponds to a noun, and describes something that remains
unchanged (invariant) during the transformational changes of the verbs. An aspect-concept
evaluates1 to an adjective, and describes some type of invariant property of a substance-concept.
As an example from everyday life let us consider the fact that middle-aged men jog. Here
middle-aged men are subjected to the action of jogging, but they remain none the less both men
and middle-aged (at least in the short run). Middle-aged men are invariant under jogging, as a
mathematician would put it.

aMale

isA

Male
PO

anAge
aJoggingUrge

isA
isAKO

PO

Age
Desire

Fig. 33. Middle-aged male jogging modeled as a kind of desire.

It is important to emphasize that our linguistic flexibility makes it impossible to fixate a concept
classification scheme along the lines of any kind of word-type-classification. Any such scheme
is bound to contain an element of arithmomorphic distortion, to speak in the terms of Georgescou-Roegen2. In the previous example, when we study the fact that middle-aged men jog,
we would probably be more inclined to say that we study middle-aged male jogging, as in
Figure (33) or perhaps jogging, middle-aged males, as in Figure (34). Note that both of these
linguistic transformations of the initial statement are nouns. In theoretical science nounification is a very common strategy of conceptualization3. Whenever we classify and structure concepts we often tend to reformulate linguistic configurations by inventing new nouns or
adjectives that we glue together into some more or less tangible thing.

1. As, an example, the value of colour might be red.

2. He refers to the process of introducing sharp arithmomorphic boundaries (of type either / or) when describing soft dialectical concepts (of type day and night) which have no sharply defined boundaries. [(57)].
3. This is natural, since we tend to be much more familiar (and comfortable) with classifying things, than with

classifying processes.

85

Male
isAKO
KO
isAKO

JoggingMale

MiddleAgedMale
KO

aJoggingMiddleAgedMale

isA

JoggingMiddleAgedMale

isAKO

Fig. 34. aJoggingMiddleAgedMale modeled as a kind of male.

The concept of jogging is a good example. When we talk about middle-aged male jogging,
jogging is a noun - presumably invented from jog. The parts middle-aged and male are
two aspect-values1 of the substance-concept jogging. However, when we talk about jogging,
middle-aged males, jogging is an adjective invented from the same source. It now appears as
an aspect-value of the substance-concept male.
This exposes the difficulty of any tree-like (single inheritance based) classification scheme:
middle-aged male jogging is a sort of jogging, whereas jogging, middle-aged male is a sort
of male. When we classify the fact that middle-aged men jog we must take care to differentiate clearly beteen these two cases. We may want to concider this fact either as a kind of jogging
or as a kind of male, or maybe as a kind of both - just as a houseboat can be considered as a
kind of house and a kind of boat..
The jogging example above is ment as a motivation for the fact that a concept in a KM can be
part of several type hierarchies (multiple type-inheritance). We will return to these questions
below.
11.4

Classification of Responses

In the terminology of the GOK, Students are invited into the teachers garden and given the
opportunity to respond to various types of configurations questions, some of them defaulted
by the teacher-gardener, others constructed by the students themselves. A response can be of
type question, answer or comment, and a comment can be either direct, i.e. expressed in multimedial form, or indirect, i.e. expressed in the form of a link (adress)
Questions can, of course, be infinitely varied, and the student must therefore be encouraged to
formulate his own variations.

1. Middle-aged is the value of the aspect age, and male is the value of the aspect sex.

86

Following our language-based conceptual classification scheme, it is natural to use the interrogative pronouns as a base for the various subtypes of question. This means that each question
will fall into one of the following basic categories shown in Figure (35).

Question

Analysis

What

Design

How

Strategy

When

Ethics

Why

Esthetics
Localization (space) or Trend (time)
Acknowledgement

Which
Where
Who

Hypothesis

If

Fig. 35. The basic questions of the interrogative pronouns

The question of WHAT (analysis), HOW (design), WHEN (strategy), WHY (ethics), WHICH
(esthetics), WHERE (localization or trend), WHO (acknowledgement), IF (hypothesis).
These subtypes are used as building blocks to construct the well-formed questions within the
GOK. Two familiar examples are given by the WHY-WHEN1 or WHAT-IF2 type of questions.
The former type of question is considered here as a subtype of WHY, and the latter type as a
subtype of WHAT.
The students should be free to comment on the teachers root-responses or default-responses
to these questions. When the student is engaged in this activity, any pre-recorded root-responses
of the teacher-gardner should be available, making it possible for the student to follow these
explanatory comments - in either direct (=multi-medial ) form or indirect (=link ) form - further into the literature and onto the net.
Recall from above that a question is defined as a form of response to a combination of concepts.
When a student selects some combination of concepts and formulates a question, the latter is
1. WHY are you angry WHEN I eat my porrige.
2. WHAT-IF I didnt eat it, would you still be angry?

87

interpreted as related to the selected concepts (the current context). If no one has asked the
question in this context before, the student is given the opportunity to store it together with his
or her own response. If the question has already been responded to - by the teacher/gardener or
by some group of co-workers in the GOK - these responses are made available to the student,
who can then add and store his own reponses on top of the present configuration.
11.5

The Relations between Concepts

Knowledge is always organized and structured, concepts always formed and related to others
by dividing and classifying the world of appearances according to some form of a priori chosen
epistemological scheme. The epistemological model chosen for the GOK supports three different types of relations between concepts: abstraction/concretization 1, ingredience/context 2,
and association 3.
Consider two concepts denoted respectively by A and B. If A is considered to be an abstraction
(=generalization) of B, then we must at the same time regard B as a concretization (=specialization) of A. In the jogging-example above, the concept of male can be considered (=modelled)
as a natural abstraction of the concept of middle-aged male, which in turn can be viewed as a
pretty natural abstraction of the concept of jogging middle-aged male - if the jogging-obsession is strong enough. From the reverse perspective, the concept of male is then subjected to
specialization (=concretization) - first into the concept of middle-aged male, and then further,
into the concept of jogging middle-aged male.
Consider two other concepts, called C and D. If C is an ingredient (=member) of D, then D is a
context (=aggregate) for C. Returning to the jogging example, we can just as well choose to
regard the concept of middle-aged and the concept of jogging, as two ingredients of the concept of jogging middle-aged male. The latter concept then becomes a context (=aggregate) for
the first two. Whether to go along with this new way of describing the relation between the
concepts or to stick to the old is an epistemological decision, whose outcome depends on the
circumstances.
The important difference between these two ways of concepual classification is that first way
(abstraction/specialization) creates a type-hiearchy, often referred to as a Kind-Of - hierarchy,
while the second way (ingredient/container) creates an aggregation-hiearchy (container-hierarchy) often referred to as a Part-Of - hiearchy.
No matter which way we choose to look at it, we introduce a thought-pattern, a kind of mental grid which was not there before. This is the essence of the speakability problem Whenever we supply some kind of mental structure in order to tighten our reasoning about a problem
the inevitable arithmomorphic distortion sets in.
As mentioned above, the GOK supports a third type of relation between concepts, namely associations (=links). The associations of a concept represents its cross-connections to other conceptual hierarchies.
1. also called the generalization/specialization relationship.
2. also called the member/aggregate relationship.
3. also called the link relationship.

88

Concepts are related to tools by application. The applications of a concept are the programs (=
tools) that are accessible (= can be applied) at the level of the concept itself. We can summarize
the relations between various forms of concepts and tools in the following
Fact 16:

11.6
11.6.1

A concept can be said to aggregate over its ingredients, refer to its associations,
concretize (or specialize) its abstractions and abstract (or generalize)its concretions.

Building Knowledge-Components and Learning-Strategies

Conceptutal Overview and Design Goals

Returning to the question of designing educational environments, I will illustrate how the epistemological ideas developed above - especially concept geometry - can be used as a tool to
describe the structure of such environments. Within the software engineering community the so
called model-view is a well-known design pattern that involves separating the logical and the
presentational aspects of a system. The advantage of such a separation lies in the increased
modularity (= independence) between these two aspects, which means that changes in each
aspect has smaller effects on the other than if the two aspects would have been more tightly
coupled. Here is an interesting way to apply the model-view pattern to the design of interactive
educational environments:
Opinion 13:

It is desirable to separate between what to teach (= the factual model) and

when to learn (= the presentational view). The increased modularity that
follows from such a separation makes it possible to design interactive educational environments with a higher potential for individualized learning.

To make the discussion more clear, I will introduce

Definition 22:

The attempts to answer the questions of what to teach and when to

learn will be referred to as designing a knowledge-component, respectively a learning- strategy.

The following discussion is closely related to the educational paradigm shift that is described in
Chapter (6.2), and which includes changing from the TeacherTenure-LearnerDuty pattern of
Figure (8) and adapting to the TeacherResource-LearnerRight pattern of Figure (9).
Opinion 14:

The traditional, collectively oriented, class-based curriculae should be

replaced by individually oriented curriculae, i.e. learning-strategies based on
each individual and his or her unique interests and capabilities. It is only then
that we can achieve the class-less educational system, or, as I prefer to call it
a first class educational system for all.

When we stop to think about it, the school is the only place where we consider a move from
first to second class to be a form of improvement. Just imagine being treated the same way by
e.g. an airline or a train company!

89

Opinion 15:

As a student, I should not be given the feeling that I have to learn what the
teacher already knows (teacher-filter). Instead, I should be encouraged to
feel that the teacher is an important resource in helping me to find out what I
want to know.

This is the overall purpose of the three different teaching-dimensions of Figure (10) - the
teacher as a preacher, gardener or plumber. The teacher-gardener helps to raise questions (by
assisting each pupil in designing his or her own personal learning strategy), the teacherplumber sees to it that as few questions as possible are lost, and the teacher-preacher sees to it
that at least some of the questions are answered.
Some - or even all - of these different roles can coexist within the same physical person, but
with todays heavy demand for education, there just are not enough such super-teachers to
cover the need. One of the main advantages of a virtual learning environment is the fact that
these three teaching-roles can be distributed across physical space, thereby taking advantage of
the facilities of cyber space to act as an electronic switch-board, connecting curiosity and interest on the side of the learners with knowledge and communicative skills on the side of the
teachers. In this way we can hope to overcome the devastating effects of the knowledge-filter
discussed in Opinion (15).
11.6.2

Designing a Learning Strategy

Designing a learning-strategy involves coming up with an answer to three important whats,

namely What am I interested in?, What is there to know about it?, and What do I want to
know about it?. Naturally, the answers to these questions are interconnected and mutually
dependent in various highly complex ways. Nurturing these questions in an ongoing dialogue
with each learner is an important task of the teacher-gardener.

What am I interested in?

What is there to know about it?

What do I want to know about it?

Fig. 36. Three fundamental questions in desiging a Learning-Strategy.

11.6.3

Structuring a Knowledge Component

The conceptual framework presented above can be used in order to describe the structure of
knowledge components as well as learning-strategies. A well designed knowledge component
can be likened to a skiing area with many ways to get down from the top. Just as a good ski-pist

90

is marked with a special colour - signalling its corresponding level of difficulty - a well
designed knowledge component should have different entries - with some form of marking corresponding to documented differences in prerequisite knowledge.
Definition 23:

Individually oriented teaching/learning strategies are characterized by the

following idea: Let the teacher decide what should be taught, and let the
student decide when it should be learned.1

Separating between knowledge-components and learning-strategies is complicated by the fact

that any given answer implies a pre-judgement of the context within which the question was
formulated. This creates a strong dependency between what is being presented and when (=
under what kind of circumstances) it is being presented, which represents a hardwired relationship between knowledge-content and learning-strategy. A well-designed knowledge-componente avoids assumptions as to the context within which it will be used.
I will illustrate with an example from the third GOK prototype described in the group-report on
the GOK-project. The geometrical knowledge-component called symmetry contains a milkdrop-movie, as an example of the concept of symmetry breaking and a movie on corn circles,
illustrating the concept of rotational symmetry and Curies Principle [see Chapter (7.3)]. In the
bottom part of Figure (37) this structure is described as a knowledge-component with two different entries.
In the upper part of Figure (37) is shown an embryo of a learning-strategy - or rather one of the
diagnostic questions that are involved in designing such a strategy - more specifically in deciding on what level to interact with the symmetry-component. Depending on the answer to the
diagnostic question Are you familiar with rotational symmetry? the learner is presented with
a suitable entry into the component - indicating that it you dont know about rotational symmetr, then you should study this concept before opening up the milk-drop movie, and a good
place to start is the movie on corn-circles.
Before interacting with more complex types of knowledge-components, this kind of diagnosticcould be performed by each learner, and by logging the individual responses, the program can
adapt to each individual and present a suggention of paths that are suitable for his or her personal traversal of the corresponding knowledge-component.
Such diagrams tend to become rather compex and hard to survey in two dimensions. It is an
interesting area of future research to investigate various forms of 3-dimensional embeddings of
such diagrams. The have the potential to present the structure of a subject in such a way as to
increase both the conceptual clarity as well as the navigational possibilities within the corresponding information space.
Concept geometry can be used to give a multi-layered concptual structure of a knowledge-component. In Figure (38), the geometrical example of Chapter (11.2) is expressed and expanded in
this notation.

1. Since the teacher is responsible for the teaching, and the student is responsible for the learning.

91

Learning
Strategy

isA
yes

no

Are you familiar with

rotational symmetry ?

When
to learn

What
to teach

Knowledge
Component

milkdrop
splash-movie

isA

Symmetry
Breaking

isA
Curies
Principle

isA
corn circles

Fig. 37. Interaction between a Knowledge-Component and a Learning-Strategy

Invariance
Geometry

Symmetry
Transformation

Quadrangle

Projective Geometry

Projective Symmetry

Projectivity

Parallellogram

Affine Geometry

Affine Symmetry

Affinity

Rectangle

Metric Geometry

Metric Symmetry

Isometry

Square

Distance

Metric

Hyperbolic Geometry
Elliptic Geometry
Euclidean Geometry

Angle

Quadratic form

Hyperbolic Metric
Elliptic Metric
Euclidean Metric

Real
Imaginary
Degenerated

Fig. 38. Part of the description of geometry as a knowledge-component.

92

11.7

Structural Evolution of Knowledge

Each conceptual classification scheme is by its very nature dynamic and is therefore subject to
evolutionary changes in the form of both refinements and paradigm-shifts. The concept of
knowledge-evolution represents partly the formation of new concepts, and partly the transformation by refinement of the old ones. The history of science provides many examples of this
evolutionary process. Within the field of physics, the concept of atom a hundred years ago
used to refer to some entity that was indivisible (= had no parts). Hence, in these days,
atom could be described as a substance-element-concept [compare Figure (32)]. As atomic
physics progressed, the concept of atom was transformed into a container-concept, which inititally came to aggregate over (= form a context for) the substance-element-concepts of electron and nucleus. By the evolution of nuclear physics, the concept of nucleus was in turn
transformed into a container-concept, aggregating over such substance-element-concepts as
proton and neutron - and eventually a whole bunch of other so called elementary particles.
11.8

The Research Front - The Surface and Volume of Knowledge

In a system where the only thing that counts (in terms of merits) is the contact with the surface,
people will tend to neglect to take care of the volume. Let me state this as a formal
Opinion 16:

In academia there is a problem to maintain the knowledge-volume, which

grows as r3, while earning your credits at the knowledge-surface, which
grows as r2. This tends to promote superficiality of research.

Bodil Jnsson has phrased it the following way:

We devote an enormous amount of skills and energy to producing neat little research-parcels - containing
useful and important factual knowledge - and wrap them up in neat little reports that are stored on the shelf
and referred to by later publications - but never actually used by anybody. 1

1. Prydliga forskningspaket som vi lgger en enorm kraft och energi p att ta fram, och sedan slr in i sm rap-

portpaket och lgger p hyllan fr att aldrig anvndas.

93

12
12.1

Establishing Equality by Disregarding Differences

Disregarding the Subjective Observer (= Oneself)

In his brilliant lectures, Schrdinger asks the fundamentally important question: What are the
peculiar, special traits of our scientific world-picture? About one of these fundamental features,
(he goes on to state) there can be no doubt, It is the hypothesis that the Display of Nature can
be understood. 1. It is the non-spiritistic, the non-supersticious, the non-magical outlook. A
few pages later, Schrdinger continues2:
There is, however, so I believe, a second feature, much less clearly and openly displayed, but of equally fundamental importance. It is this, that science in its attempt to describe and understand Nature simplifies this
very difficult problem. The scientist subconsciously, almost inadvertently, simplifies his problem of understanding Nature by disregarding or cutting out of the picture to be constructed, himself, his own personality,
the subject of cognizance.
Inadvertently the thinker steps back into the role of an external observer. This facilitates the task very much.
But it leaves gaps, enormous lacunae, leads to paraxoxies and antinomies whenever, unaware of this initial
renunciation, one tries to find oneself in the picture or to put oneself, ones own thinking and sensing mind,
back into the picture.
This momentous step, cutting out oneself, stepping back into the position of an observer who has nothing to
do with the whole performance - has received other names, making it appear quite harmless, natural, inevitable. It might be called just objectivation, looking upon the world as an object. The moment you do that, you
have virtually ruled yourself out. A frequently used expression is the hypothesis of a real world around us
(Hypothese der realen Aussenwelt). Why, only a fool would forgo it! Quite right, only a fool. None the less it
is a definite trait, a definite feature of our way of understanding Nature - and it has consequences.
The clearest vestiges of this idea that I could find in ancient Greek writing are those fragments of Heraclitus
that we have been discussing and analyzing just before. For it is this world in common this or
of Heraclitus, that we are constructing; we are hypostatizing the world as an object, making the assumption
of a real world around us - as the most popular phrase runs - made up of overlapping parts of our several
consciousnesses. And in doing so, everyone willy-nilly takes himself - the subject of cognizance, the thing
that says cogito ergo sum - out of the world, removes himself from it into the position of an external
observer, who does not himself belong to the party. The sum becomes est.
Is that really so, must it be so, and why is it so? For we are not aware of it. Ill say presently why we are not
aware of it. First let me say why it is so.
Well, the real world around us and we ourselves, i.e. our minds, are made up of the same building material, the two consist of the same bricks, as it were, only arranged in a different order - sense perceptions,
memory images, imagination, thought. It needs, of course, some reflexion, but one easily falls in with the fact
that matter is composed of these elements and nothing else. Moreover, imagination and thought take an
increasingly important part (as against crude sense-perception), as science, knowledge of nature, progresses.
What happens is this. We can think of these - let me call them elements - either as constituting mind, everyones own mind, or as constituting the material world. But we cannot, or can only with great difficulty, think
both things at the same time. To get from the mind-aspect to the matter-aspect or vice versa, we have, as it
were, to take the elements asunder and to put them together again in an entirely different order. For example
- it is not easy to give examples, but Ill try - my mind at this moment is constituted by all I sense around me:
my own body, you all sitting in front of me and very kindly listening to me, the aide-mmoire in front of me,

1. Schrdinger, Nature and the Greeks, [(144)], p.90.

2. Loc. Cit., p.92.

94

and, above all, the ideas I wish to explain to you, the suitable framing of them into words. But now evisage
any one of the material objects around us, for example my arm and hand. As a material object it is composed,
not only of my own direct sensations of it, but also of the imagined sensations I would have in turning it
round, moving it, looking at it from different angles; in addition it is composed of the perceptions I imagine
you to have of it, and also, if you think of it purely scientifically, of all you could verify and would actually
find, if you took it and dissected it, to convince yourself of its intrinsic nature and composition. And so on.
There is no end to enumerating all the potential percepts and sensations on my and on your side that are
included in my speaking of this arm as of an objective feature of the real world around us.
The following simile is not very good, but it is the best I can think of: a child is given an elaborate box of
bricks of various sizes and shapes and colours. It can build from them a house, or a tower, or a church, or the
Chines wall, etc. But it cannot build two of them at the same time, because it is, at least partly, the same
bricks it needs in every case.
This is the reason why I believe it to be true that I actually do cut out my mind when I construct the real
world around me. And I am not aware of this cutting out. And then I am very astonished that the scientific
picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our
heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and
physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes
pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined
to take them seriously.
So, in brief, we do not belong to this material world that science constructs for us. We are not in it, we are
outside. We are only spectators. The reason why we believe that we are in it, that we belong to the picture, is
that our bodies are in the picture. Our bodies belong to it. Not only my own body, but those of my friends,
also of my dog and cat and horse, and of all the other people and animals. And this is my only means of communicating with them.
Moreover, my body is implied in quite a few of the more interesting changes - movements, etc. - that go on in
this material world, and is implied in such a way that I feel myself partly the author of these goings on. But
then comes the impasse, this very embarrasing discovery of science, that I am not needed as an author.
Within the scientific world-picture all these happenings take care of themselves, they are amply accounted
for by direct energetic interplay. Even the human bodys movements are its own as Sherrington put it. The
scientific world-picture vouchsafes a very complete understanding of all that happens - it makes it just a little
too understandable. It allows you to imagine the total display as that of a mechanical clockwork, which for
all that science knows could go on just the same as it does, without there being consciousness, will, endeavour, pain and delight and responsibility connected with it - though they actually are.
And the reason for this disconserting situation is just this, that, for the purpose of constructing the picture of
the external world, we have used the greatly simplifying device of cutting our own personality out, removing
it; hence it is gone, it has evaporated, it is ostensibly not needed. In particular, and most importantly, this is
the reason why the scientific world-view contains of itself no ethical values, no aesthetical values, not a word
about our own ultimate scope or destination, and no God, if you please. Whence came I, whither go I?
Science cannot tell us a word about why music delights us, of why and how an old song can move us to tears.
Science, we believe, can, in principle, describe in full detail all that happens in the latter case in our sensorium and motorium from the moment the waves of compression and dilation reach our ear to the moment
when certain glands secrete a salty fluid that emerges from our eyes. But of the feelings of delight and sorrow
that accompany the process science is completely ignorant - and therefore reticient.
Science is reticient too, when it is a question of the great Unity - the One of Parmenides - of which we all
somehow form part, to which we belong. The most popular name for it in our time is God - with a capital
G. Science is, very usually, branded as being atheistic. After what was said, this is not astonishing. If its
world-picture does not even contain blue, yellow, bitter, sweet - beauty, delight and sorrow - , if personality is
cut out of it by agreement, how should it contain the most sublime idea that presents itself to the human
mind?

95

12.2

Equality as Relative Indifference

Equality is cosidered to be context-based, i.e. circumstantial. Equality is always investigated

(taken to hold) relative to some pre-supposed context which is more or less unspeakable and
therefore has to be tacitly agreed upon. For instance, when we state that X is equal to Y, we
obviously disregard the difference in shape of the two letters. In fact, equality always requires
someone, i.e. an externally observing subject, in order to compare the two candidates. Hence:
Fact 17:

Equality is always taken relative to an observer (=someone). Two things are

equal (equivalent) when - and only when - the observer chooses to disregard
their difference1.

In this way, each kind of equality is equipped with its own protocol-of-disregards, a kind of
protocol that defines in what sense the corresponding items are equal to one another. We
could say that we describe the equality in terms of its disregarded concerns. This forces us to
attempt to formulate these concerns, which places the given type of equality within a more general context and high-lights the equivalence-classes that are involved in its application. This is
the essence of abstract thinking - being sensitive to what differences and aspects of a problem
that can be disregarded without losing touch of its essential structure.2 Relevance is obtained by
systematically disregarding irrelevance, which is expressed in the following well-known
Fact 18:

The power of thinking is knowing what not to think about.

Definition 24:

The disregarded concerns of an equality are are called its indifferencespace.

The observing subject was (implicitly) introduced into mathematics by Kurt Gdel in his
famous paper of 1931 [(62)]. There he proves the unavoidable existence of certain logical
statements within any formal theory that embraces the infinity of natural numbers (in a recursively defined way). These statements are basically just formal encodements of the phrase this
statement cannot be proved, which implies that they are not logically decidable, i.e. verifiable
or falsifiable within the formal system. However, they are by their very nature true, but this
truth is a form of meta-truth, which necessarily requires an externally observing subject in
order to be recognized.
From a philosophical point of view, we can summarize these achievementsis in
Fact 19:

In [(62)] Gdel establishes the logical necessity of subjectifying mathematics

once and for all. He writes the observer into the equations, so to say, without
any logical possibility of ever ruling her out.3

1. either because (s)he is unaware of - or uninterested in) this difference.

2. A well chosen abstraction can often disregard almost every aspect of a problem. Classical examples are given by
e.g. Newtons law of gravitation or Maxwells equations for the electromagnetic field.
3. In his book Gdel, Escher, Bach [(76)], Douglas Hofstadter presents some striking illustrations of this point.

96

13

A Formal Model of Participator Consciousness

We make use of our Perception/Conception Duality (yin/yang pair) of Induction/Deduction in

order to build coherent patterns (representations) of the world and our own relations to it.
What came first, the experiment or the conceptual framework? This a chicken-and-egg type of
situation where each one needs the other in order to develop properly. Hence they display a
duality which is similar to the yin/yang of ancient Chinese philosophy.
13.1

Making Sense is Disregarding Nonsense

Whenever it comes knocking on your windows, experience presents itself as a set of readings
on your sense-monitors. Two different knocks will trigger the same reading it the monitor is
unaware of their difference. The process of sensing is equivalent to ignoring nonsense.
Definition 25:

A perceptor is an organ that is aware of the universe.

Definition 26:

Awareness , i.e. being aware, is a mapping from the universe to the perceptor.

Definition 27:
Definition 28:

Fact 20:

Im(Awareness) = Sence(Perceptor) is the space of perceptor-awareness.

Ker(Awareness) = Nonsense(Perceptor) is the space of perceptor-ignorance.

Sense = Universe / Nonsense.

According to Fact (20), The sensual image is always perceived modulo its corresponding kernel
of perceptor-awareness. Hence, a perceptor makes sense from the universe by disregarding its
own non-sense. It is the nature of perception to experience (= conceptualize) reality as a direct
sum of sense and nonsense. It is the aim of perception to reconstruct - from its memory of the
universe as it was, modulated by the sensual image as it is - a unique experience which is
coherent with the others. It is the purpose of perception to reconcile the inductive evidence of
the image with the deductive predictions of the conceptual model . It is the structure of perception that this reconstruction is performed by a suitable choice of non-sense, guided by deductive
assumptions in the model. (We assume that ..., hence we can conclude that ...)

Aspect

Reality

Disregard

Fig. 39. The short exact sequence of a disregarded aspect.

97

Aspect

Reality

Disregard

change
Aspect

Reality

Disregard

change
Aspect

Reality

Disregard

Fig. 40. The chain complex of disregarded aspects.

Definition 29:

13.2

Each change, the effects of which are neglected by its iterates (change2 = 0)
creates a chaincomplex. Each aspect of it creates a subcomplex. The disregard of this aspect creates the corresponding quotientcomplex.

The Participator as a System of Perceptors

Definition 30:

A system S is a family of objects and arrows - with at most one arrrow

between each pair - which is closed under concatenation, i.e. the concatenation of two subsequent arrows of S is alway an arrow of S.

A system determines a coherence condition between its different parts. It is clear that if one follows two different paths between to given objects in a system, the resulting arrow will always
be the same (since the diagram is commutative). We say that a system is internally coherent, or
that it is coherent with itself.
Definition 31:

A participator is a system of perceptors, linked together in some form of

biological unity.

Each specific implementation of such biological unity (= type of species) implies its own specific coherence condition on the performance of the individual perceptors in relation to each
other. Such a condition can be thought of as a form of common protocol for mutual interaction. In fact let us generalize the concept of coherence, by making the following
Definition 32:

Two systems are said to be mutually coherent (= satisfy a coherence relation) when they conform to a common protocol.

98

13.3

The Actor/Reactor Consciousness

Consider the participator P, given by the system of perceptors {Pi : i I}. We will denote this
relationship by P = Pi .
Definition 33:

The actor- and reactor consciousness, PAct respectively P React

of the participator P = Pi , are defined by:
P Act = lim
P
i

P React = lim
P
i

(7)

In the role of actor, the coherence protocol is implemented by obedience (we act coherently
== we obey), and in the role of reactor the coherence protocol is implemented by agreement
(we react coherently == we agree). Hence the concepts of obedience and agreement form a
kind of dynamic duality that reflects the corresponding structure of the coherence-protocol of
the actor/reactor duality of behaviour. Expanding the semantics, we can write
Participator Act = lim
Perceptor i

Participator React = lim

Perceptor i

The <Target|Observer> notation is introduced in [(114)]. Since a participator has both a <Target| and an |Observer> aspect, we can introduce the natural representation
Participator = Target Observer

(8)

perceive
Action

Reaction
conceive

Fig. 41. The Yin-Yang type of interaction duality.

This makes the target-observer aspects correspond precisely to the natural projections:
Participator | = Target Observer | = Target |
|Participator = |Target Observer = |Observer

(9)

From (3) and (4) we can deduce four natural types of participator behaviour:
Target React Observer Act

Target Act Observer React

React
Target Act
Observer

React
Target Observer Act

Theses behaviours are represented by the four different rounded squares of Figure (42)

99

(10)

I am sensed by
something

I do something
Target
I am sensed by
something

I do something

Act

React

I do something

I sense something
Observer

I sense something

I do something

Fig. 42. The Act-React as a Target-Observer patterns.

Definition 34:

Given a participator P, a change is a couple U -> U ->P -> U (before, after).

Two changes are coherent, if there are morphisms P->P->P such that the
diagram commutes.

For each individual participator P , this defines a class of coherent changes in a natural way.
Moreover, in the spirit of Poincar1 I make the following:
Definition 35:

Space is the class of invertible coherent changes (= the undoable).

Definition 36:

Time is the class of non-invertible coherent changes (= the non-undoable).

The concepts of a participator are the structures that remain invariant under a large enoug subgroup of its actions and its reactions. These are the nouns of its conceptor geometry. The verbs
of the conceptor geometry are the changes that are perceptible and coherent to the participator.
Each participator has an anticipator and a verificator.
Definition 37:

The participator is said to be relaxed when its verification is exact.

In this case we have the exact triangle: Before->After->Participator depicted in Figure (43).

1.

Science and Hypothesis, [(128)].

100

Before

change

act
conceive / perceive
anticipate

After
react
verify

Participator

Fig. 43. The exact triangle pattern of anticipation and verification.

Fact 21:

13.4

Science contains a non-exact couple of deductive anticipation and inductive verification. The so called scientific process is driven by the lack of exactness for
this couple, which goes by the name of astonishment, 1and which is inextricably
linked to curiosity.

Building a Knowledge Manifold by Calibrating Knowledge Patches

A Kowledge-Manifold represents a kind of network that carries within itself the informational
coherence of a culture. Any implementation of a Knowledge Manifold is constructed - just as
a standard mathematical manifold 2- by the successive calibration of local patches (= overlapping coordinate transformations).
An important part of a Knowledge Manifold (KM) is given by its calibration protocols. This is
a set of rules which are either obeyed (in the active mode) or agreed upon (in the reactive
mode) - depending on how you choose to interact with the surrounding patches. By defining an
idea (= concept) as a representation of an experience, [Definition (21)], a Knowledge Manifold
starts from a collection of subjective views (individual Knowledge Patches) that are linked
together - by calibration of individual views - into the objective world , i.e. the real world
around us . This way of conceptual modeling focuses on the individual - as opposed to the collective - way of relating to knowledge. It is designed as a framework to support subjective education, i.e. individually based learning strategies that are developed in a cooperative process
between the learners and the teachers.
Figure (44) shows the basic pattern for such calibration activities. Tokens are used as an
abstract place-holder for recording the mode of activity. This discussion is connected to CCCtransaction model, presented in Figure (45).
1. According to Schrdinger [Nature and the Greeks, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996 (1948), p. 57], The first requirement of
a scientist is to be curious. He must be capable of being astonished and eager to find out. Plato, Aristotle and Epicurus
emphasize the import of being astonished (). And this is not trivial when it refers to general questions about
the world as a whole; for, it is given us only once, we have no other one to compare it with.

2. A manifold is a mathematical concept that provides a suitable metaphor for a general (= abstract) description
of the knowledge-formation-process. In modern mathematics, a manifold is just an atlas of patch coordinate
systems that overlap smoothly with each other. If the atlas is maximal, it is called a differentiable structure,
and we speak about a differentiable manifold. This concept plays a fundamental role in the mathematical
description system of (= theoretical) physics.

101

Token

yes

Active

Reactive

obey => grab

agree => grab

Will I
obey
this ?

no

yes

invalid
(exception)

Will I
agree on
this ?

no

invalid
(exception)

a CoherencePattern
isA
Consensus Calibration Protocol

Fig. 44. The structure of the action and reaction calibration protocols.

102

14
14.1

Future Work
Conceptual Navigation in Structured Information Spaces

In this paper I have presented a mosaik of different ideas centering around the problem of how
to create effective educational environments. The metaphor of the Garden of Knowledge as
well as the abstract conceptual framework of a Knowledge Manifold were both developed with
this overall purpose. During the coming fall there will be process to define the future of the
GOK-project. The emerging information technology of cyber-space offers enormous possibilities to support the learning process and enhance it in various ways. In a situation where the traditional school systems across the world are faced with serious difficulties in stimulating
interest and curiosity among their students, it is necessary to explore new ways of performing
this vitally important task.
I have hopes that the project can continue its exploration of how to present a mixture of theoretical and practical knowledge within various forms of cyber-environments, such as e.g. Dive or
Active Worlds. This involves a number of interesting research questions, as e.g. how to utilize
the merits of 3-dimensional representations of knowledge-component-graphs, such as the one
presented in Figure (38), in order to support the process of navigating in large information
spaces. Also, the use of emerging standardized digital informational formats - such as HTML,
VRML, MIDI, etc - will be helpful in exploring new possibilities for the design of knowledgecomponents - in accordance with the principles of Chapter (11.6).
14.2

The Virtual Classroom

The virtual classroom is a generic name for various forms of interactive educational environments. It can be seen as a form of electronic switching-board, facilitating knowledge-transfer
across cyber-space. Below I present a sketched outline of a transaction model that incorporates
this interactive structure as a special case. It can also be used to model the multi-dimensional
money-transactions of electronically supported bartering and trade. The structure is modeled on
top of a publically available class-library - called JSDA - written in Java.
14.2.1

The Controller-Commodity-Client Transaction Model

The backbone structure of the model is shown in Figure (45). Commodities of type Resource or
Service are controlled by Controllers of type Manager or Agent, and supplied and used by Clients of type Target and Observer. An observer is of type Consumer or Monitor, depending on
whether (s)he is interested in consuming data or monitoring certain changes or conditions in the
data-flow. Commodities are supplied by Targets, booked by Agents and managed by Managers,
etc. The type hierarchies that emerge are basically reproduced under each CCC-branch, according to the so called abstract factory pattern, which is familiar within software design[see e.g.
(50)].
A Session is a type of Service which involves several clients exchanging information. A Multiparty is a special type of Session where this exchange is carried out over several Channels
where the clients can have different roles in different channels.

103

Manager

use
supply

control

Controller

Client

Target

Agent

Observer

Commodity
subcontract
Resource
Manager
Service
Manager

Consumer
Resource

Channel

Session
Token

Session
Manager

Monitor

Service

Multi-Party

Resource
Consumer
Service
Consumer

Active
obedience

Session
Consumer

Reactive
agreement
Fig. 45. The Controller-Commodity-Client model class diagram
14.2.2

Controller-Commodity-Client model : An Outline of a Data Dictionary

What follows is a short, informal description of the required functioning of some of the major
objects involved in the CCC-transaction model.
Client
An object which is part of application or applet and is a (potential) participant in an instance of
multiparty communications. Once properly associated with one another (see Session), related
Clients can transfer data in a point-to-point or multipoint fashion. A Client object can be the
source or the destination of the data which is being exchanged in an instance of communication. Any number of objects in a Java applet/application can be defined to be Client objects
(with respect to this multiparty communications API).
Session
A collection of related Clients which can exchange messages via defined communications paths
(see Channel ). The Session maintains the state associated with the collection of clients and
their associated communications paths, and may interact with an object which encapsulates a
defined session management policy (see Manager ). The process of negotiating for, and selecting, the specific transport protocol to be used is done transparently at Session instantiation. An

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application or applet can have multiple Client objects associated with the same (or different)
Session objects.
Session (dynamically)
This service establishes a multipoint Session over point-to-point connections. Within that
multipoint Session a Client can send data to different members of the Session and have access
to Tokens for resource contention resolution.
The first thing a Client has to do is join a Session, using the join Session method. The Session
will typically have multiple Clients (either at the same site or at other sites). An application or
applet can have multiple Clients in the same Session. Each Client might be handling a different
kind of data (ie. audio vs video). A Client can be a member of multiple Sessions.
The leave Session method is used by a Client to leave a Session. Once the Session is established, the Client then joins the appropriate Channels it requires for receiving data. The use of
these Channels is application dependent. The Client should then let the Channel know who is
going to be the Channel consumers of data sent over this Channel. Tokens are also provided for
managing the resources available to the clients.
Channel
A specific instance of a, potentially multi-party, communications path between two or more
Clients within a given Session. All Client objects which register an interest in receiving from a
given Channel will given messages sent on that Channel (see Consumer below). Any Client
which possesses an object reference to a Channel is able to send a message on the given Channel, and a Client can have references to multiple different Channels.
Channel (dynamically)
Once the Session setup and Client attachment is completed, the last step to be performed before
data can be exchanged between all the members in a multipoint fashion, is to join the right
combination of interaction channels. Channels are session-wide addresses. Every Client of a
session can join a Channel to receive data sent to it, and by joining an appropriate combination
of Channels, and by consuming them, a Client can choose to receive Messages sent to these
Channels and ignore Messages sent to other Channels. Clients subscribe to and leave the
desired Channels with the join and leave Channel methods.
Consumer
A Client object which has registered its interest in receiving messages sent over a given Channel. Any Client can be a Consumer, and it is possible for a given Client object to be a Consumer
of multiple Channels a the same time.
Consumer (dynamically)
A Client sets a Consumer on a Channel to receive Data sent over that Channel. The Data contains the raw data, plus the senders name, the priority the Data was sent at and the Channel the
Data was sent over.

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Monitor
A Client object that has registered its interest in being notified about changes in state of some
other given Client object.
Monitor (dynamically)
A Monitor can observe changes in a Session, on a Channel or with a Token. A Session Monitor
will be notified about Clients joining and leaving a Session. A Channel Monitor will be notified about Clients joining and leaving a Channel, plus a Client being invited to join a Channel
or expelled from a Channel. A Token Monitor will be notified about Clients joining and leaving
a Token, plus a Client being invited to join a Token or expelled from aToken. They are also notified when a Client wishes to give or take a Token from another Client.
Manager
A Controller-type of object which encapsulates some management policy for another given
object. For example, a Manager is used in order to authenticate Clients to determine whether
they are allowed to join a given Session.
Manager (dynamically)
Access to a Session, Channel or Token can be controlled by assigning a Manager to it at creation time. The Manager is responsible for authenticating Clients wishing to join this Commodity, and based upon their response with accept ot reject them. Both send and receive access to
individual channels can be controlled by a private channel mechanism. Any Client may convene
a private Channel with the convene Channel method, which results in him/her becoming the
private channel manager of an empty channel. The Channel Manager can invite a Client to join
the Channel using the invite Channel method or force a Client to leave with the expel Channel
method. Clients join and leave these private channels using the regular join and leave Channel
methods.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The same process occurs for Tokens using the equivalent Token methods.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Token
A synchronization type of Resource object which provides a unique distributed atomic operation. Tokens can be used to implement a variety of different application-level synchronization
mechanisms (e.g., to ensure mutually exclusive access to a shared Resource).
Token (dynamically)
Tokens provide a means to implement exclusive access. For example, to ensure in a multipoint
application using resources that one and only one site holds a given Resource at a given time, a

106

Token can be associated with every Resource. When a site wishes to use a specific Resource, it
must ask for its corresponding Token, which will be granted only if no one else is holding it.
The grab Token method allows one Client to exclusively hold a given Token. The Client defines
the significance of this Token in the application. Other Clients may use the test Token method to
determine the status at any time and may request the Token from the holder with the please
Token method. The token holder may transfer control of a Token to another specified Client
with the give Token method or return a Token to a generally available status with the release
Token method. A single token may be used to coordinate a multiple client event by using the
grab Token method in a non-exclusive mode. Clients can independently inhibit and release the
same token. For example, if it was desired to know when all clients have completed reception
and processing of a bulk file transfer, all receiving clients would non-exclusively grab (inhibit)
the same token and each individual client would release the token when it had completed the
proscribed process. Any client could test the token at will to determine if the token is free which
means all the clients have completed processing.
Data
Once the participating Clients have attached to the common Session and joined the right combination of Channels, they are ready to exchange Data in a multipoint fashion. The send and uniformSend Channel methods provide the actual transfer of data. Each send data unit can be
delivered to multiple sites. Uniform data sequencing, or delivery at each site of identical
sequences of Data, is provided with the uniformSend Data method. The send Data method provides the "one-to-many" communication, which includes point-point as a particular case. Simple send data from different senders may arrive in a different sequence at each site, since they
are delivered using the most direct route. Some sequencing occurs even without using the uniformSend Channel method. The sequencing of data sent from one sender on one Channel at one
priority is maintained identically at all receivers. The uniformSend Channel method offers this
service. All the uniformSend requests are dispatched in the same order to all the receiving sites.
(Note: Uniform sequencing is necessary when data is being sent simultaneously from several
sites, but must be received in the same sequence by all receivers.)
Message
A discrete unit of data that is sent by a Client over a Channel to all of the Clients which have
registered an interest in the given Channel.

107

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